The Club builds and operates layouts in a variety of scales.
Orchard Wharf’s Trackwork bubble working party
This piece of trackwork was under construction for an eternity — long, long before lockdown had been thought of — and it was finally attached to the baseboards during an all-too-brief working session in early October. It’s the crossover at the London end of the high level lines. The plain track for the running lines …read more.
Jan 3, 2021
York Road – Permanent Way takes shape
As Young Timothy has been valiantly polishing lumps of coal dust for his latest green painted shunter, I have made a start on the crossover formation for the tunnels to the North of York Road station. The running rails for one of the turnouts are now in place, and I will start putting chair plates …read more.
Dec 30, 2020
Bow Junction – July 2020 Update
We have managed to make some progress on Bow Junction during the lockdown. Here is a photo of the Foundry board and the mainline behind it. We are now fixing the track connection to the Foundry. Progress is also being made in connection with rolling stock. As you can see there are about 25 wagons displayed with …read more.
Jul 26, 2020
Richard’s 2mm track building and baseboards
Richard has started work on his latest 2mm Finescale home layout. He’s started with track and baseboards, with an innovative way to align and hold the boards together. The Trackwork Here’s where the track building starts, laying out some point work – quite a fun scissors crossover- and on a curve too. Double crossover is …read more.
Jun 14, 2020
Track Building – Part 2
In Part 1, I outlined the plan to build new track and points in EM gauge for Minories for the expanded fiddle yard. Here’s how it went, starting off with how it ended up – the full sized layout up in the library at Keen House. Most of this track building work took place in …read more.
May 31, 2020
A new test track – Home working for Orchard Wharf
Converting a lot of OO locos and rolling stock to EM gauge is the sort of job that is best done at home. I’ve had an EM gauge test track for some time, but it’s only a 5ft straight track. This is no good for checking, for example, clearances on curves and points, of which …read more.
Apr 25, 2020
2mm and N gauge Scissors – a track building weekend
It looks like this might be a track building weekend – as we’ve had two quick updates on what look like quite a bit of work. Richard is making good progress on a 2mm FS scissors crossover on a slight curve – you can see the critical geometry in the V and K crossings is …read more.
Apr 20, 2020
Bow Junction – ready for another busy year
Bow Junction is our 7mm scale layout, which is being built to Scale 7 specification. The main difference from standard finescale 0 gauge is that the track gauge is 1 mm wider and the back to back dimension is 2mm greater. Also the thickness of the wheels is less than finescale 0 gauge. It is …read more.
Jan 11, 2020
Copenhagen Fields – November 2017
Space is always tight in our lower layouts hall, but we’ve got a few weeks available to have the whole layout up, which gives us the chance to carry out some of the more major projects on track and wiring. We have had an incredibly productive day today with both new fast line loops completed …read more.
Nov 24, 2017Prefab platforms
We have started the building of our platforms on Ingatestone 00 which are of two types – traditional brick and the later extensions using a pre-fabricated concrete system (see header picture). This has meant we have been busy making prefabricated plastic components too! And they have to be laid out accurately so that the …read more.
May 27, 2017Ingatestone’s April update
Ingatestone 00 is our demonstration layout on Thursday 20 April in the lower hall, and we hope to put up the four front scenic boards to help check for shorts and running. The Monday session was most productive, Mo and Tom put higher ends on the boards to protect all that “knitting” aka OHLE as …read more.
Apr 12, 2017
Point Rodding
We have been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes in the last few weeks to make CF easier to shift and exhibit – especially as we have Ally Pally coming up in less than a fortnight. We have a truly massive fiddle yard board at the back that has undergone a weight …read more.
Mar 14, 2017