The "O" gauge group has two layouts. Each of these is completely different in its makeup

LONGDON

This is the largest one and is a permanent club layout being 53' long and 2' 6" in depth so cannot easily be moved. We are fortunate in that we have that rare club facility in that layouts do not have to be dismantled. In fact the situation is that in five minutes you can be up and running. The lay-out is two rail fine scale and is named in memory of one of our past "O" gauge members. It is built to a period of 1930's to 1960's but of course you can run anything on it and it still looks fine. We have a good cross section of age groups with the younger ones naturally keen to run modern image so we have asked them to look at this with a view to possibly building one or two more modern buildings that could be 'changed over' depending on the period of running on the day. The summer months we also have the odd Wednesday afternoon as a running day, mainly for the non working older gentlemen. This is always good for a laugh and we are keen to expand these days.  Logden is cuurently being revamped, including a complete rewire so that it could be switched to DCC if required.

SUCKLINGS YARD

This is the smallest of our 'O' group layouts being 15' long and 2' 6" in depth. It is an exhibition layout designed to attract new members to 'O' gauge because they operate the loco's which is unusual. It is a shunting yard with about 13 trucks and 2 locos. All the trucks are fitted with 'sprat and winkle' type couplings so they couple automatically and at strategic points magnets are set in the track so that when a truck is placed over the magnet the steel link chain goes down and breaks the train at any given point. There are three seats in the front of the layout, the centre one is for the new driver, the outer two are for club members who do all the point work for the new driver. They are given a small plastic card showing a short train of four trucks that have to be found and made up in the order shown. The smaller loco does all the finding and leaves the truck in the correct place for the larger loco to pick up which takes it to a siding each time until the 'local' is complete. There are just enough buildings, coal yard, signal box, period vehicles and people to give it character and most clubs that book the layout ask to us to come again which is very pleasing

 

Interested - then contact Mike Roualle on 020 8953 1016 

 
 

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