Ty-Morau

TY-MORAU (The Seasons). 1995

I am including this layout because it was a large part of my "modelling history" between 1995 and 1999.  It wasn't my layout at all, it was owned by George Gleadhill, one of the Norfolk Group members at the time.  

He had seen a layout at an ExpoNG show called " The Bellfield Hall Estate Railway" in 7mm, 09 scale, it was a circular revolving layout, and he wondered if he could make something similar in 009 scale.  George built the baseboard drive unit using a 12 volt heavy duty windscreen motor driving a rubber tyred pulley wheel, and power was fed to the baseboard using copper rings around the centre pole.  The 3ft diameter scenic baseboard had a sprung clamp that kept the power connected to the drive unit beneath as the baseboard revolved.  Not only was the board revolving when in use, it also had two automatic train control modules by Trax Controls of Norwich - a "Station Stop" module for the passenger line circuit and a "Shuttle Module" for the coal mine train.

He wanted to model four different scenes based on the seasons of the year, however there was not room for all four, and we decided to model just three, spring/summer, autumn and winter.

He asked my wife and I if we could lay the track and build the scenery for him, and after we met several times with ideas we settled on a track plan and an arrangement for the three scenes.

George and I exhibited Ty-Morau a number of times around East Anglia and a colour article all about the layout appeared in the "Railway Modeller" in  January 1997 and also November 1997.

Here are some scanned 35mm prints of the layout:-

The drive unit board showing the windscreen motor, pulley wheel and centre pole with copper rings for the power feed to the scenic board.

This would eventually be the Gwaith-Ddu mine winter scene.  Under a detachable hill side were the Trax automatic train modules and in the centre, the white clamp power connector.

Arriving at "Pendinas" (summer scene) is "Isobel", a Gem T.R Douglas kit I beleive on an Iberten chassis hauling Nine Lines stock.

This little loco ran well, it was an Arnold "N" gauge conversion.  It is seen in Pendinas coal depot.

Pendinas village.  The castle was made with embossed Das clay on a balsa wood shell, it was under-scale as both forced perspective, and simply to get more of it in!

An early shot with "Isobel" (before she was named) hauling Egger Bahn four-wheelers into Pendinas station.

This was the Gwaith-Ddu mine winter scene with the passenger train on the lower line and the coal mine train above, leaving the mine.  The snow was made with Busch Snow Powder stuck on with thinned household gloss paint.

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A cold scene at the mine entrance.

The autumn scene called "Canal Cwm".  Both lines ran through this section, a passenger train is on the lower circuit, while bottom right and top right can be seen the gradient up to the coal mine.

A coal train runs down the gradient through Canal Cwm towards Pendinas.

 Ty-Morau plan.