Association of Model Railway Clubs Wales & West of England

Set somewhere in South London this small layout represents a British Railways Southern Region suburban station which has been electrified on the third-rail system. Due to wartime damage the line has been cut back to Streatwell and modernised with colour light signals. Parcels traffic has a presence on the layout and uses the centre platform bay and there is a small coal siding for limited freigh traffic. The trackwork is all Peco code 100 with electrofrog points, and makes use of the third rail chairs and Z gauge conductor rail from the same manufacturer. Point motors are all Peco, with the 3-way point polarity controlled by Peco auxiliary switches. The baseboards are made of 9mm. MDF on a onventional 3x1 timber frame and these have been well varnished to combat distortion through damp. The backscene is of 4mm. ply and 1x1 strip wood. Two kitchen unit 2ft. striplights are incorporated into a plywood lighting unit in the top of the layout. Situated to one side of the layout is the fiddle yard, five tracks of which use a sector plate and the rear 2 sidings are accessed through a point, thus 6 or 7 storage tracks are available for use. The layout is controlled from the front by conventional analogue using Compspeed or Gaugemaster controllers. There is a small diagrammatic control panel on the main board, and push buttons control the feeds to the fiddle yard.  The buildings are mainly modified kits, some of American origin which have been built low relief o fit the site. The station building is scratchbuilt and based on Medstead and Four Marks, and the factory above the tunnel to the fiddle yard is built from Wills sheets and the signal box is a Skaledale model. Most of the stock is from the Hornby and Bachmann ranges, although there is an Ian Kirk kit-built 2-BIL unit and an MTK demu.