
7mm scale O gauge by Graham Clark.
This layout represents the Woodhead line in its final years. The layout is located in a set of traction exchange sidings east of Sheffield. The track plan is freelance but based on features taken from Rotherwood and Wath. The bridges, in particular, are based on the real ones in the Rotherwood-Orgreave area. The layout has taken around ten years to build, but more than twenty years from concept to fruition.
Track is Peco Streamline bullhead and flat bottom rail products, with the pointwork made from Peco Individulay sleepers and chairs/baseplates. The double junction was built on a 1:43 scale print of the Network Rail standard drawing of a double junction. Some of the plain line uses Peco Individulay parts with plywood or Peco ‘concrete’ sleepers. Care has been taken to try to make the trackwork as realistic as possible.
The stone buildings were made from foamboard covered with a DAS modelling clay surface, scribed to represent the stonework. Other buildings are plastic card (the signal box) or Ten Commandments resin castings (the permanent way hut). The various road vehicles are mainly Corgi and Oxford, but there are a number of Land Rovers which are to the right scale, which were obtained very cheaply from a toy shop. The chip shop has a ‘working’ deep fryer (actually a Suethe smoke unit in the chimney) and can be operated by visitors pressing a button on the front of the layout, as can the chimes in the ice cream van (generated by an MP3 player and speakers under the board), and the flashing blue light on a Peco police telephone box finished as the TARDIS from Doctor Who.
The scale overhead line equipment is the most distinctive feature of the layout. The masts were built from brass sections soldered together on top of a scale drawing of the prototype, in the same way as they were built on Deepcar, the NMRS’ OO gauge Woodhead layout. Photographs of typical masts were used, taken from various books, and supplemented by some measurements of the size of the steelwork which still exists at the Manchester end of the line. The wiring is to scale, and originally consisted of 28 gauge nickel silver wire for contact wire and 28 gauge copper wire for the intermediate and catenary wires, tensioned by small tension springs on the layout. Inspired by the continental wiring runs made by Somerfeldt and Viessmann, all the wire runs have now been replaced by 0.5mm piano wire, silver soldered together.
The locomotives naturally include a fair number of Class 76 (EM1) Bo-Bos. These were built from Graham’s own kits, which included etched brass for the main frame, bogies, cabs and pantographs, and cast resin for the sides and roofs. The process was described in a series of articles on building 7mm scale/O Gauge EM1s in Railway Modeller between December 2010 and April 2011. Some of the electric locos have sound and arcing pantograph effects. The first diesel locos were from various kits, by Post War Prototypes, RJH, and Modern Motive Power. Recently there has been an influx of ready-to-run locomotives, including a pair of 20s, classes 25, 45, and 56 from Heljan, and a Dapol 08. The Class 56 has been converted into a Romanian example using a Protoneo kit. All of the diesels have Loksound, or more recently, ZIMO sound decoders, and some have homemade smoke units.
There are diesel multiple units of classes 114 (a Westdale kit), and 123/124 (converted Lima Mk 1s), and a present-day CAF Class 195, scratchbuilt as a lockdown project and run as an example of what would be found on the line if it still existed today. Rolling stock is mainly kit-built, from Parkside and Slaters kits, but there are also some scratchbuilt wagons, and several rakes of ready-to-run HAA hoppers (a mixture of Skytrex and Dapol), HEA hoppers (Bachmann Brassworks), some other ready to run vacuum-braked wagons (Dapol). Many of the 16 ton mineral wagons are detailed Lima items. Mk 1 coaches are from Easy Build kits and Dapol ready-to-run, with the Mk 2s converted from Triang Big Big Train items.
The layout is controlled by the MERG CBUS DCC system along with a MERG RPC interface providing track circuits and controlling the points. The signals are ‘searchlight’ types modelled on the real ones around Rotherwood. They are semi-automatic and controlled by a small relay interlocking.
Netherwood Sidings was featured in the November 2024 issue of Hornby Magazine. It can next be seen at the NMRS Autumn Show, 16th and 17th November 2024.