South African Model Scene 1960’s to Present Day

July 8, 2012

Peter Field from Pietermarizburg South Africa has sent in this article to share:

In later years model trains became my media for creating a small South African village and country side scenery that I so enjoy in my spare time and as we grow older we need to make time to relax and spend time with our hobby.

In the past few years I’ve built a number of layouts 4 to be exact some very basic whilst others have been quite complex in design, however the basic point was to operate model trains.

I had now started my new layout (back in the garage) number 5, on a board that was used for the 2007 Model Railway conference in Westville which has also been used for the Bisley Miniature Live Steamers hobby fairs over the last two years, which has been modified somewhat from the original board which is now mounted on a steel frame table.

My present board was started as a demonstration board of 1.80m x 1.20m the idea was to show people that you could operates HO on a small board and still enjoy what was on the board, however there were plans afoot to add another board to this also being 1.80m x1.20m in the near future which will give me a straight run of 3.6m on each side and the other side will represent a Karoo scene with on or two farms and a very small village a three to four houses and a shop and a garage.

At present my new board houses a replica of Hilton Station built by Eric Tucker and a factory some houses a Wimpy and Service station, working farm with a combine harvester and animals on the farm with a windmill and a real country atmosphere, a church scene and two shops, the layout has a tunnel, some cuttings two signals still to be connected and a spur that runs to the factory and the engine sheds and a staging line.

All houses are lighted as well as the streets etc.

As the board is wired as such I can operate one train on small we call it board A in a loop formation whilst on board B we can shunt or make up another train whilst the train on Board A is running it’s section.

When I am ready I close all the points and the train can now go from board A to board B in one big loop as long as the pints are all closed on board A. Then again when it’s finished it run I can close off board B and open the points on board A and revert back to two operations on separate boards.

Once again it’s fun to spend time operating the layout, seeing it change every so often and make improvements. As when is necessary.

As previously mentioned there is always some thing to do be it track maintenance, fixing this or that improving or changing a building sorting out wiring beneath the board etc.

And so 2011 dawned and it was time to add another board to the layout which was duly completed which now gives me an additional a total length of +- 16 meters to operate trains.

I still operate trains most Saturdays which I find very relaxing and gives me time to recapture those memories of the past and of my child hood riding behind those “giant steeds” of the past.

Well in November 2011 I had to go to Cape Town on leave and collected my Class 25 Condenser and returning home put it on the board and after running well suddenly ground to a halt on the one corner the reason being the radius of the corner was only +- 24 “ and as the size of the locomotive dictated that a minimum of +- 32” was needed and after considering this it was decided to alter the boards yet again by adding on 1.2 meters to cater for the wide radius of the wheels.

This meant rebuilding sections of the board and changing scenery which was duly done and the Class 25 Condenser can now negotiate the corners quite easy and lovely to watch going through the corners.

The board is now completed with a game reserve with elephants, giraffe, rhino, and hippos and other animals imagine going through the game reserve by rail and seeing these animals.

With that came a game lodge and two small farms and thus the layout was completed in six months time.

Now I can run a Class 25 Condenser or Class 34 diesel through my board be it a passenger train, container train, fuel train or a coal train.

It still looks spectacular going around the board with what ever train is running.