The layout that is known as “The OO Layout” having never been named is now well over 20 years old and is a true representation of a layout that will never be finished as we are continuously upgrading the layout and making various changes. As with the layout none of the stations have ever been named and they are all refered to by their type.
The Layout takes the form of a permenantly installed layout built around the structure of our club room, a grade 1 listed building. The general design of the layout is a circuit style with a large main station forming a junction, as well as supporting local industry with a large goods yard and a line down to a nearby basin off the local canal network. There is also a large motive power depot supplying motive power for the local services from the station and also for long distance services.
As we leave the main station to the east there is a suburban loop line which runs to the local outlying suburbs running mainly in a clockwise direction during the course of the day, however some services do run anticlockwise along the line. Due to the busyness of this station it isn’t unheard of for various services to start heading west from the “up” side of the station by running around this local line.
Heading out of the West end of the Station in the “down” direction the line breaks from the two track mainline into a 4 track mainline as we head around to a flying junction where a line breaks off towards a nearby holiday town served by a terminus.
Also heading out the back of the station is a branch line serving the more remote communities from our main station. This line does run parallel for a fair distance to the main line however does start to diverge as the line climbs further up one of the notable hills of the region.
The Layout takes lots of inspiration from various real stations and often expands on that was there on the prototype however the main aim of the layout is as much operations and play as opposed to being a real true to life layout. As a result various details are missed off the layout as they would be deemed fragile and are likely to be damaged. There are also a few points missing which would be present in real life, there is no points between the up and down lines on the main circle of the layout so as to avoid head on collisions. There is easily capacity on the layout to have up to 20 movements happening at any one time across the whole layout which is where the control system comes into its own.
The basic idea behind the layout is that there is a part to represent every region around 1950/60 during the period of BR Steam and just into the diesel era of the modernisation plan. The Main station is set in the Southern Region with the building itself being based on Chatham station, our local station. The Terminus is based around the Eastern Region with inspiration coming from somewhere around the Scarborough area where large trains may be expected in the summer but smaller services would serve the station through the rest of the year. The Branch consists of 2 station, a small halt on the route which is inspired by Western Region practices and then a larger Midland Region station at the end of the line which could find itself nestled around north Wales or even Cumbria.
The main control for the layout is through DCC however there are various parts of the layout that can be controlled with DC by means of changing the power method for various parts of the line. As well as the traditional DC and more modern DCC we also have capacity for OO Live Steam to be run on the layout.
