Model Railway Forum

Hello all,

The back story:-

1070 ..... Geoffroi Skarffe was given lands in the Welsh Marches for his part in the 1066 invasion. Geoffroi was very grateful and asked the King if he could solve a personal problem. He was a widower his sons had been killed in the battle leaving only his eldest daughter. The next day with much pomp, splendour and Trumpets a Royal Decree arrived at Geoffroi's lodgings.

1916 ..... Matilda Skarffe ran the estate in no nonsense military fashion with the practice and ease born of generations of her families attachment to the military. Major Hamilton Xxxxxx badly wounded in the Ypres battle had taken a commission in the Royal Engineers. Matilda finding that the War Office were asking for rural territory in order to set up Gov't Agency Factories relinquished some of her estate.

Hamilton was billeted at Skarffe Grange and it was love at first site. Matilda explained that there was a Royal Decree, which stated that should a female be the estate beneficiary and wish to marry, the suitor must change their name by applying to the Monarch. They were married in Skarffe village Church.

The existing light railway partly financed by Matilda passed within site of the estate walls. A little further inwards lay some disused buildings ideal for the start of two factories. One making leather goods and the other webbing, both in great demand.

(synopsis rejected by Mills & Boon .Ed)

I doodle plans on odd bits of paper, if I can work out all the possible movements in my mind in a few seconds it will be dead boring to operate, I like slow running and shunting


I'd been thinking about making a layout with the storage built into the main part and not as an extension as I have done on my past 3 layouts. I like to have all the stock on my layouts so I don't have to keep fingering it.

I kept thinking about Colin French's Foxbile layout in 2 box files: https://www.carendt.com/small-layout-sc ... uary-2010/ he was my inspiration to start with small layouts.


With that in mind I wondered if I could make something even smaller, not in Colins 29" but not much bigger. I came up with this still being able to get at both sides of wagons to use the reverse siding and shunting one wagon at a time and getting really complex with 8 wagons on the layout.

Cheers - Jim

You seem to have layout planning sussed Jim. I find it really hard to envisage what my track and layout will look like so I end up with a sort of organic/cobble it together look which leads to mistakes and starting bits again. All your layouts seem very simple but just work very well.

Hello Mick,

Thanks for the comment good of you, I went to a show in about 1976 and met a Mr Donaldson who made USA locos, I was astonished at the slow, no! the crawl running. 44 years later I am still delighted when I get a homemade 0-4-0 to run slowly for a few hours. I'm just a nerd!

Cheers - Jim

Looking forward to development of this layout Jim

Hello TWD,

Thanks for the comment, I'm looking forward to it as well. I've never made anything this small so far. I'm drawing it out on the plywood at the moment, just hope the track is going to fit OK.

Cheers - Jim

Hello all,

Some progress on the baseboard,


I've made it 3" longer and altered the traverser angle from 10 degrees to 5 degrees.

1/. Cut out for the traverser
2/. These pencil lines are taken from a rail rather than the centre line, the one on the left had to avoid the traverser and one the right to see if there's enough room for the backscene.
3/. The 'Barry' slip two ordinary points on top of each other.
4/. The dotted lines are for the cross member and its diagonal, drawn to see if the diagonal will miss the point tie bar.
5/. 1" at the end and the same at the other side leaving enough room for a tongue and groove either side of the traverser.

Have bought some cheap screw clamps on eBay when they arrive I'll start with the cross members and slide for the traverser.

Cheers - J