South African Model Railway To Be Proud Of

May 6, 2016

Peter Field from Pietermarizburg South Africa sent in an update of his model railway to share with readers.

Looking up along the layout at the bottom is the farming area, middle are the factories and top end of the board is the village.

He’s what Peter has to say –

In an article some years ago I built a board which was basically a demonstration board of 1.80x 1.20m that was portable for model train shows.

A class 25 Condenser hauling the Trans Karoo passes the Anglo Boer war block House on route to its destination.

The next phase of the building plan was to make it a permanent layout still being 1.80x 1.20m and broke the board up somewhat to modify it and to extend it at a later stage.

In 2013 I started to expand the board and added another 1.80×1.20 board to the existing board which was now 3.6meters in length, this took almost a year to complete and add the scenery etc. Then at the end of 2015 I extended the layout yet again by 500cm making to the total layout 4.10x 1.20meters in size.

The layout was built to represent the South African railways in the early 1960’s up until the mid 2006 period.

When steam and diesel were working side by side on many of the SAR lines. There were the mighty Class 25 condenser locos to the Class16E a Pacific grey hound and the 15CA on many lines mixed with diesels of various types from the Class31, 34. 35, 36 and some SAR electric locos Class 6 E1.

The layout is based on a rural area of the Midlands in Natal with a general dealer, Hotel, Church, Garage and some factories and farms on the one side of the layout all served by rail.

The Hilton station with an EMU on the adjacent line whilst a goods train hauled by a Class 34 diesel glides past the station.

The village has plenty of action with people doing what people do taking dogs for walks people shopping at the grocery store ride motor cycles, people getting married at the church people working on the roads, offloading containers in the container bay area. Plenty of motor vehicles and trucks and farming implements on the farms.

The track in total is +- 8.20min length plus all the sidings along the line which is operated off a dual controller which powers the rails and the 16V supply to the towns lights and street lights etc.

A Coal train being hauled by a Class 34 diesel past the factories with a wine farm on the left.

The trains can vary from the Crack Trans Karoo express to the Blue train or mixed goods trains Coal trains or container trains or even a fuel train as the operate in block trains over here for say coal.

We also have a 1940’s balcony coach train of wooden stock to represent that era with the first diesels imported into South Africa the Class 31 or a fast passenger train hauled by a Class 25 condenser or a pair of Class 34 diesels. There is also an EMU suburban train that operates every so often. Trains are made up in terms of the periods when they would have operated on the SAR. The whole idea was to show what the South African railways looked like in the respective periods.

I call this layout “My world” as it was in my young years to the mid 1970’s when I saw the railways in the period of my life from a young boy to a young adult . There nothing more relaxing than to go into my train room and sit operating trains shunting and making up trains for the next session and to repair trains that are damaged or broken.