Association of Model Railway Clubs Wales & West of England

Terminus station with parcels depot and servicing facility for sleeper coaches.

 

 The concept of building Castell Sofia came about after spending a holiday in Scotland in 2017 with a visit to Fort William and a ride on the West Highland line. Whilst waiting for our train the Caledonian Sleeper Service arrived behind one of the re-built class 73xx locos. The 73xx promptly uncoupled from the train run into a stabling siding and a WCR class 37xx later coupled to the other end of sleeper coaches and pulled the train out of the station. After clearing the station the train was then pushed into a siding adjacent to the station for servicing etc. I then thought I could model something similar in 4mm scale with the shunting of  the sleepers adding an extra bonus.

 Being Welsh the setting for the layout had to be in Wales and a suitable name found for it. With homage to the name Fort William I decided upon “Castell” ( a fortress or castle) and “Sofia” ( my granddaughters name) and merging the two together.

 As well as the sleeper service other commuter and inter city trains come and go from the station pulled by a variety of diesel hydraulic and diesel electric locos along with DMU’s for local services. Most of the locos are painted in Blue but the occasional loco in Maroon or Green may turn up.                                                            The busy parcels depot provides further interest by allowing trains of vans and wagons to be shunted into  the yard for unloading and eventually re-formed into new trains to leave the depot.