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HISTORY

The original Norwood-City railway was developed over three years and was contained in a garden sheet of approximately 2.5 by 3 metres in our metro property. In early 2009 following a decision to retire to the country some 400km away it was necessary to dismantle the railway for transportation. The new property includes a much larger work shed some 4metre square which is insulated with heating and air conditioning.

Unfortunately the Norwood-city railway was not designed for transportation as it could not easily be broken into sections. However, it was possible to separate and transport intact the following:

Rolling stock, road vehicles stations, buildings, some signals and overhead wiring, switches and transformers were etc were saved from the rest of the layout comprising Arnos Junction and Enfield Halt for reuse on the new layout. The base boards and track for these sections were not able to be used again. Click here to view the first layout.

The increased size of the work shed and lessons learned from building the new layout have enabled a bigger and hopefully better layout to be build in less time. As not all the space in the work shed has been used there is also scope to extend the layout further overtime. The build time for the new layout was six months although more time was been available because of retirement.

THE SECOND LAYOUT

The new layout called the second 'Norwood-City Railway' is, like the first railway, located in a fictitious heritage area west of London.

The new railway comprises the following:

• Crompton Road, exactly as it was on the original layout;
• Crompton North, also exactly as it was on the original layout with no station;
• Norwood-City, slightly remodelled from the orginial layout to accommodate longer platforms and is connected clockwise on the layout after after rather than before Crompton Road;
• Elmsfield Halt, retaining the same platform but completely new track layout and scenery;
• Upton Park, almost exactly as the original except for one rather than two tracks across the level crossing;
• Tambo Upper, which is a completely new station and platform; and
• Elmsfield South, another new station;
• Oakham, a new town and station; and
• Woodend, a new village and station.

The advantages of the layout include:

• increased size;
• more operating flexibility;
• plenty of siding space;
• larger radius curves;
• greater distances between some stations;
• more gentle incline to Upton Park; and
• simplified wiring.

TRACK AND ROLLINGSTOCK

Track Electrification

Like the original layout rail lines comprise:

• 4 rail track on the inner circuit to represent London Underground track to facilitate the operation of some of the Hornby Dublo 3 rail locomotives;
• 2 rail track on the middle circuit; and
• 2 rail track with overhead centenary on the outside circuit.
  

Two rail circuits were again straight forward, however the additional centre third rail circuit at points on the inner circle and overhead on the outer circle did cause a few minor problems however, these were not as bad as the first layout.

Rolling Stock

As stated above the same rolling stock is being used on this layout. Operation of some of the older locomotives has not been a problem as they had been debugged on the first layout.

Scenics

There still remains a large amount of work to be undertaken, as yet there are only a few back scenes in place, and a lot more work is required on the scenics.

PICTURES

 Layout Pictures