Author

Mike Lloyd

Date

9th September 2013

Reading Time

< 1 minute

Putnam is The Model Railway Club’s American based layout, originally inspired by the Putnam branch of the New York Central Railroad, which ran north from New York. This line was single track and mostly ran through a semi-rural landscape of small towns and small farms. The layout is HO scale (1:87) with control via DCC. It is a work in progress, designed to grow gradually. The yard has been exhibited several times as an end-to-end layout, but we have recently completed work to turn it into an oval and can now run much longer trains. Work is under way to add scenery to the new boards. The big curve at the right hand end is the first to be tackled and, in contrast to the semi-urban nature of the main yard, will be rural in nature featuring a considerable number of hand-made trees.

We try to operate the trains with New York Central locomotives, both steam and diesel as befits a model set loosely around 1950, although locomotives from other railroads are used at times. Rolling stock represents the huge number of different railroads that existed at the time.

Work continues on the layout, including making the fiddle yard wider to enable a wider variety of trains to be run at exhibitions.