Moving from our former model railway club room to our new location at Primrose Community Centre presented new challenges. This move was the 4th within the 30 or so years of the club’s existence.
The room we now meet in is hired on an hourly basis and consequently, everything is either brought and taken home or unpacked and then put away at the end. Any permanent layout or infrastructure just isn't possible. However, we were given an out of use cupboard and that meant limited storage behind it.
Test trials using a very simple plywood sheet with 2 loops of track had its drawbacks. Without strengthening, it easily warped and eventually, it was held down flat...ish with clamps! This lasted a few years. Then the population and demographics of the club changed dramatically when a large number of younger members joined within a 12 month period. The wanted to run trains, lots of trains!
As a temporary measure, they settled on bring set track to build a 3 loop railway with turnouts and sidings. While this situation met their needs, it didn’t address the needs of the wider club and the fact that the 2 sheet solution was starting to fail. Something better was needed.
A successful grant application to the Barbour Foundation allowed us to move forward. The design had to be as thin as possible and yet strong enough to stop the wood warping. The young ones wanted to learn how to do it and so progress was only going to be as fast as their enthusiasm and the glue drying.
We learned a painful lesson using old wood cut down when the whole thing warped and the joints no longer fitted. A strip down and rebuild put things right. It was demoralising for all of us. Lesson learned! The track laying and wiring took its time as most of it is surface mounted and glued down. The loops are wired as a one length of track rather than a sealed loop. There are 3x passing loops and it is wired for both DC and DCC.
It has various scale options:
1x loop of 32mm track for O,16mm and 7/8th;
3x OO/HO/O-16.5 tracks with a passing loops and 2x that are just loops of track;
2x N loops;
1xTT loop.
There are talks of another test track that will have 45mm track for LGB garden rail
As well as being supported by the Barbour Foundation we received encouragement and help from Squires Tools and by the kind generosity of Pat Kerr who gave us track and equipment from the railway of late Cllr Alan Kerr who was a great supporter of the Club. We are grateful for all the support we received.
There is now a cohort of new members who can do woodwork, track laying, wiring and soldering who couldn’t before as well as the club having a test track for us all to use.
