Solihull Model Railway Circle

A scenic OO gauge, 26 feet 6inches by 10 feet 6 inches, four track mainline with an integral branch line. It features working automatic signals and has largely scratch built buildings with a local theme (The Manor House, The Mason’s Arms, The George Hotel, The Fat Cat Cafe, Kings Heath library, Tyseley Station, and Water Orton Station). The layout was built mainly to display scale length mainline trains, those being run reflecting the varying interests of the membership. Trains run are usually British outline, but can come from any part of the UK mainland and from any date between about 1900 and the present day. If you look carefully you can see pigeons roosting under the station bridge, foxes using the track bed as a shortcut and one fox eyeing lambs, gulls eggs and the shepherd on the upper pasture, cats watching building work in the arch from the platform and gulls above the sea and on the cliffs with a lonely cormorant.

All change for Willoughby is a Z scale layout set in the 1950’s New England. The Scene is set on the 31 October ‘Halloween’ focousing on realism and fantasy. The stoch is a collection of pieces that uses artistic licence by the owner looking closely; viewers will popular culture scenes from films such as ‘Sleepy Hallow’ and ‘Buffy the vampire Slayer’ to capture the fun side of this popular event.

Enslow town has a busy branch line, with a wagon repair works. The works is the main employer for the town. We rum a schedule on the branch line and mainlines. Expresses to slow freights can be seen on the 4 track mainline below Enslow town.

The Layout sets out to depict a picture of an L and Y railway motive power depot in 1910. This date was chosen by the group as it is the rough mid point of the golden age of the pre World War 1 railways.

Harboure is a truncated branchin the West Country hanging on to survival. Freight services are varied and the passenager serive is operated by a ‘Bubble car’. Motive power includes Hymek’s and a kit built class 22. This layout was featured in the June 2010 ‘British Railway Modelling’ magazine.

This layout is set at the time around nationalization. The track plan and station buildings are based on Upton-on-severn, on the line from Ashchurch to Malvern and therefore reflect Midland Railway style and practice. The other buildings are fictional or inspired by Worcestershire prototypes such as the hop warehouse of Leonard and Harrington which was in Southfield Street, Worcester.

The Rolling stock is predominantly kit built, as are many of the locomotives. Some of the mainly London Midland Scottish locomotives carry numbers which were known to have run on the line, sporting either ‘L. M. S.’ or early British Railways liveries. An attempt is made to run trains typical to the line, particularly the single coach and van working from Ashchurch that terminated at Upton, ran around its train in the goods yard, reversed into station prior to departing for Ashchurch.

The lower quadrant Midland Railway pattern signals and the ground signals are all operational and built from M. S. E. parts.

In 1847 J C Jacobsen established his brewery on a hill at Valby, København named Carlsberg (Carl’s Hill) after his son. In 1881 Carl opened his own brewery, New Carlsberg, which merged with Old (Gamle) Clarlsberg in 1906 and a narrow gauge railway was built in 1908. Rolling stock was mainly German manufactures but included some from other countries. The system finally closed in 1957. The old brewery is now a visitor centre and museum and there is little evidence of the railway system left.

The model is built to scale of 1/45. Its simple track plan has a sting in the tail – there is on run round. It is operated as a shunting puzzle and the locomotives and points are all dcc controlled. To solve the puzzle operators must use (at least) two locomotives. Points are changed with Fulgurex motors and couplings are Kadees. The principle rolling stock is all by Fleschmann. Buildings have foam board shells and are covered in Howards Scenics embossed brick papers. As a modeller, I treat my models as a rather 3-dimensional work of art and hence my approach to impressionistic. With such a simple layout other features are needed to hold your interest and I hope Gamle Carlsberg will surprise and delight you. Look inside its buildings and see it’s animated effects.

The track plan is based on Abergnolwyn, Talyllyn Railway in the 1930’s. Buildings are all scratch built based on Talyllyn, Corris and Glyn valley prototypes. Locomotives and stock are mainly scratch built using Talyllyn, Corris and Glyn railways prototypes, with a few freelance ones.

The circular part of this layout was completed as a 13 feet across, two-road test track in 2001. In early 2005, work started on eight straight boards to turn the circular test track into a three-track oval layout with a station and fiddle yard. By mid 2007, the track and wiring on the eight straight boards was completed, with two main lines and a third track which is used as a goods line.

All the boards are made from 9mm exterior plywood with partly aluminium bracing. The layout is supported on square section tubular steel legs with nuts welded onto one end, so that they can be screwed into the bolts under the boards, and rubber door stops on the other ends as feet. PECO Streamline 'Fine Standard' Code 124 'bullhead' track is used and the layout is 29 feet across by 13 feet deep, with a minimum track radius of six feet.

The layout has PECO six foot radius points, switched using ‘H & M’ point motors and micro-switches from a single control panel. Panel-mounted feedback controllers are used to drive up to three trains at a time. Some scenery has been completed and several Midland Railway buildings have been made for it from scratch by a club member, modelled on local prototypes. There is an opportunity to provide the layout with further scenery and buildings. It has been built to display reasonable length trains and allows continuous running, those trains being run reflecting the varying interests of the membership.

12. A Scottish Branch

4mm scale, OO gauge

Solihull Model Railway Circle

A new end-to-end branch line club layout based on Scottish practice, displayed here partly built to give an insight into layout construction. It is 16 feet long by just over 2 feet wide and we are using SMP code 75 bullhead plain track and handmade Marcway points and is being constructed to run with either DCC or traditional control. There is to be a terminus station at one end and a hidden 'fiddle' yard with a traverser at the other with a scenic section in between. A major part of the concept is the use of very deep baseboards with the railway running through the middle, allowing greater depths and heights of scenery for a more interesting appearance. The major architectural feature is the curved viaduct based on Killiecrankie.


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