Our design principles when planning the layout included:

The general style of the layout should be Midland, somewhere in, or near, the Peak District and the period should be early 1920s to permit both pre- and post-grouping liveries.

The layout must accommodate standard gauge mainline, standard gauge light or industrial railway and narrow gauge because those were the interests of the members of the 7mm team within the MMRG.

Straight lines should be avoided for the main running tracks.

There should always be some movement on the layout.

The layout should have scenic interest for its whole length.

Layout overview

The resulting layout is actually 3 related, but unconnected railways, plus a tramway, each operating on its own level. This gives a layout which is full of operational interest along its whole length despite having fiddle yards at both ends of the mainline to enable a high level of train movements. The multiple levels give rise to two of the features of the layout, its retaining walls and rock faces. Many hours have been spent scribing foam board and carving plaster.

On the top level, at the left-hand end hiding one of the mainline fiddle yards, are the quarry buildings. Here stone is loaded into narrow gauge wagons for the short journey to the wharf where it is transferred into mainline wagons. The middle level is a fictitious secondary Midland Railway line. Just the platform ends of Hammeston station are visible; the majority is hidden by a town street scene complete with tramway. The mainline reduces from double to single track as it passes the wharf providing an opportunity to stop trains at the signals as tokens are exchanged and brakes are pinned down for the steep gradient down to the fiddle yard.. On the lowest level, a standard gauge industrial railway makes a brief appearance and provides a link with the canal.

At the right hand end an 8ft street scene hides the other fiddle yard. Tramway track is laid down the street and across the railway bridge although it is currently non-operational.

The scenery

With three railways and a tram system packed into a single set of baseboards, we needed the scenery to link the 4 distinct systems into a single, homogeneous layout. A large proportion of those baseboards is covered with trackwork leaving limited space for the scenery. Consequently much of the visual impact of the layout derives from its near vertical surfaces which are a mixture of retaining walls, bridges, rock faces and steep slopes.

One of our design principles was to make the layout attractive. The picture below identifies the key scenic areas on the layout.

Controlling the layout

Separate hand-held controllers are provided for the mainline up and down control positions.

The master mainline control panel is close to the fiddle yard at the station end. There is a second panel at the other end for that fiddle yard operator. Both mainline fiddle yard operators can control any section of the mainline. In practice, the station operator drives trains out of his fiddle yard as far as the signal controlling access to the single track section. The other fiddle yard operator brings trains into his yard and drives trains the whole way in the opposite direction.

The loading wharf has its own controller. Its operator controls shunting the main line sidings and movement of narrow gauge trains while they are being unloaded.

The primary narrow gauge control panel is at the end of the quarry where the operator can supervise the initial loading of stone into narrow gauge wagons and the despatch of loaded trains to the transhipment hopper.

The industrial railway has its own control panel. Operation of the bottom level is very repetitive although it requires care to follow strict sequences otherwise its fiddle yard can become blocked. With the layout needing 6 operators to keep the mainline, wharf, narrow gauge and trams running, the bottom level was an ideal candidate for automatic operation. A laptop PC, running Windows controls all operations on the industrial railway via a set of interface boards. Two of the boards enable the PC to control points, section breaks, and train speed and direction. A third board links to infra-red sensors and micro-switches which detect train position. The interfacing uses units from, or based on designs from, the Model Electronic Railway Group.