The Railway

Seaford is a fictional port town in no particular part of the country, the chosen period is 1975-80 and passenger services consists of infrequent express trains to and from the capital with the bulk of passenger operations made up of secondary services - both loco hauled and DMU operated. Seaford is the meeting point of three routes; the main line from the capital and two branch lines. The first is the single car DMU operated local service from Holt Junction, this runs in on a raised brick supported embankment and crosses the mainline at Renrock Tunnel before arriving at Seaford in a high level platform adjacent to the mainline station. The second branch line is more substantial and runs to Buckhurst calling at various stations trains are mainly DMU operated although loco and coaches do substitute. Also en-route is a colliery as well as a stone terminal. Freight trains to and from these locations need to reverse in Seaford Yard to gain access to the mainline.

Freight plays a big part in the area with a medium sized marshalling yard, goods depot, docks area and wagon repair sheds all at Seaford. As mentioned above coal and stone trains reverse in Seaford Yard and traffic for the various terminals at Seaford arrives in the yard before being tripped to their destination. Also at Seaford is a small rail served scrap merchant and a siding serving the diesel depot stores. Seaford TMD has no mainline loco allocation of its own being a sub shed of a larger facility nearby, it does however have an allocation of shunting locos. The depot only carries out fuelling, servicing and light repairs to mainline locos. The wagon repair shed sees a variety of vehicles for repair both from the wagonload and engineers fleets - giving the excuse to run most types of stock from the period!

Construction

Baseboards

Seaford is constructed in a 16' x 12' garage conversion and is a permanent fixture therefore baseboard construction was relatively straightforward although all walls are plasterboard and would not be able to support the weight of the frame & baseboards, also two inward opening doors had to be contended with. The preferred 'tail chaser' set up would require two lifting sections to allow access to other parts of the garage - so this was discounted and a 'U' shape with a fiddle yard using only one lifting section was decided upon. The baseboard frame is made up from 3 x 2 timbers with the floor taking all of the weight and plasterboard fixing screws to the walls holding everything in place. The baseboards themselves are 12mm chip board. Photos of the baseboard construction are here

Trackwork

All track is Peco streamline using mostly medium and curved turnouts although the dock area pointwork is Peco set track. The points are insulfrog and the next layout will not be using these. I don't recommend DCC and insulfrog turnouts! A rough trackplan was sketched and then put in place with many design changes on the way! Once the track had been laid it was loosely pinned in place and holes then cut in the baseboard where point motors were to be installed at inaccessible parts of the layout - points within easy reach are hand operated. Noch ballasted underlay was used on all straight running lines with cork under pointwork, this was then hand ballasted. Photos of the trackwork construction are here

Electrics

The layout is operated by the Lenz Set 100 DCC system will all lines directly wired from the track 'bus'. Peco point motors are operated via the LH100 handset using Lenz LS150 accessory decoders.

Scenery

Usual scenery techniques are employed using products mostly from Noch. Structures are a mixture of kits and scratchbuilt items.

Operation

I wanted a railway that would interest me operationally therefore as many freight terminals have been squeezed in as possible, although scale length trains were out of the question, due to room size available,so a compromise has been reached with express passenger trains being 4-5 coaches, secondary trains are 3 coaches with 2-coach DMU's. Freights are generally no longer than 12 wagons. Yes a Deltic does look daft on load 4 but until I buy a mansion it will have to do!

Most diesel classes are or will be represented and at the moment its is quite normal for a Hymek or Western to be buffered up to a class 26 or 27 on shed, although in time an effort will be made to rotate locos to give the layout a regional theme. The passenger station aside, the main area of operation on the railway is shunting and trip working to the various depots, there is plenty to keep two operators busy although things can be operated by one person.