South West Herts Model Railway Society
The SWH OO Group has about seven members at the moment (it does fluctuate a bit) covering a wide range of likes and skills. We are just about to start a new OO layout which will be modern image and also run a GWR/SR Branch Line called Tedburn St Mary which has now reached the mature stage where refinements are the order of the day.
The new OO which at the moment hasn't been named will be modern image but without a date tag i.e. an actual period being non specific. This approach means we can make it anything from Blue era BR to today's Network Rail era. We think this will appeal to many modellers by not being tied down to anything specific and to make it appealing to the younger generation.
As with a lot of model railways we feel that doing an actual station with a specific date can be very restrictive and often requires a lot of research and plenty of room which we don't have! So we have come up with a scenario that the Great Central in its push to get to London at the turn of the century built many of its stations with 4 tracking in mind. We have assumed that it did four track all the way and when Beeching came along the lines were retained but reduced to two tracks. This type of arrangement happened in many parts of the country Manchester Victoria to Guide Bridge as an example, and as far as we know this hasn't been modelled before so it should, at the very least, be novel.
As mentioned before room limitations have dictated what we can do. We would dearly love to do a large round and round but it wouldn't be practical in the room area we have (much envy of many clubs up north who have plenty of both room and members). The approach is of a modular type of design where we can change the layout according to what is required. Hidden siding to end station as the very basic level, hidden siding to hidden siding, hidden siding to station/hidden siding in the form of a U and full round and round. The very basic level will be 24 feet long by 30 inches wide increasing to 36 feet long or 37 feet by 9 foot 6 inches as the full round and round (which we will only be able to erect at club occasionally). Other features of this layout will be interchangeable features such as two different station buildings (one for Blue BR and a modern building) and different drop in industries for freight (again allowing for early type of industries such as fertilisers to today's industries such as stone).
Also we are now gearing up for DCC so everything will be DCC ready as we feel that in a few years everything will be DCC anyway and ALL CLUBS will have to accommodate DCC if they are going to attract new members.
There are also features about the layout which are quite revolutionary, so transportation, stacking and erection are all taken into account. The legs for example are pyramid type with the top cut off (we call them towers) so stacking is easy where they stack one on top of the other. This gives us big advantage in that the weight of baseboards are kept down and one big advantage is that they are not layout specific but can be used for other layouts or demonstration boards or whatever. Baseboards themselves also follow a more radical approach with the side pieces not at the edges but inset a couple of inches so that holding bolts/wing-nuts can be slid in (no more getting on the floor to put the bolts in).
The track plan has been made up but is not set in stone. This allows us to modify as we go along if necessary, we are not tied down by some mythical demon (or committee!) who says 'but at the last meeting we said we were going to do .....' A more relaxed and/or radical approach is the aim rather than following a strict dictum which ultimately fails and everyone in the end becomes dissatisfied with the result (and then we spend years correcting the bad design/flaws that were put in originally because the committee said so at the time of original building. Yes I've been in many clubs where that has happened).