Wyre Forest Model Railway Club
ATHERLEY NARROWS
Chris Round Atherley Narrows HO Scale Canadian Pacific in the 1990s Since   visiting   Toronto   in   Canada   in   1990   and   1994,   I   have   built   two   layouts   based   on   the   trains   I   saw   then and   in   particular   those   of   the   Canadian   Pacific   railway   or   CP   Rail   as   it   was   then.   Both   Stoney   Hill   Yard   and Stoney   Hill   West   were   successful   HO   Scale   layouts   and   visited   many   exhibitions.   However   there   is   always a   desire   to   build   a   better   layout   and   remove   some   of   the   irritations   with   previous   plans.   All   I   needed   was some inspiration. It came in the form of a photograph I had taken of a swing bridge at Atherley near Orillia in Ontario. The bridge was already out of use in 1994 when I photographed it and it was a Canadian National line rather than CP Rail but like many modellers, I’ve never been too fussy about absolute authenticity. My initial thought was to build a simple diorama of the bridge and its approach piers, but I soon progressed to grander plans once construction of the bridge started. Operation on Stoney Hill had always been limited because all of the industries were accesses off the main line so through trains could not be operated at the same time as industry switching. The track plan for Atherley Narrows allows for industries to be served from loops off the main and in most cases from two separate staging roads in the fiddle yard. The layout can accommodate three operating areas each independent of the others. The layout is 20ft long and 8ft wide including a barrier in front of the scenic viewing side. It can be transported in one Volkswagen Touran estate car. Individual baseboard modules are 4ft x 18ins in size and the scenic boards (and one end board) are paired together facing inward to form boxes to protect the scenery during transport. Baseboards are constructed from plywood and are as lightweight as possible for ease of transportation. Track is Peco code 75 rail and all points(switches) and crossovers are hand made from rail soldered to copper clad sleepers (cross ties). Points are hand operated by rods attached to electrical switches at the rear of the layout. Control is old fashioned DC. I’ve too many old locos to convert to DCC and I can’t afford the cost of the better sound equipped new locos which are available. Much of my rolling stock is second hand and all of the buildings and main scenery elements are scratchbuilt. There are still a lot of details to be added. The layout is not yet complete (as at June 2017). The edges of the boards need painting and a lighting unit and upper fascia needs to be built.  Below are some photos of the progress so far:
The swing bridge under construction. The base of the bridge is a metal shelving bracket and the bridge is constructed from plastic card. It pivots on a ball race.
The bridge baseboard (board 2) nearly complete.
Two photos of Board 1 – front fascia as yet unpainted.
Board 3 -  Timber yard.
Boards 3 and 4 – Horizon Foods Depot.
Board 4 – Hand made points(switches) and crossovers.
Board 5 – Industries
The whole layout assembled for the first time.