Introduction

The layout was originally conceived over several months in the summer and autumn of 2011 by myself, Jem Soady and Ian Carty. The layout would built for the Blyth and Tyne Model Railway Society and sponsored by my own company Smart Models who will be providing all the building models for the layout.

This project started out as refurbishment of an old 8' x 4' layout. This rapidly changed to building a new layout that was first 16' long and then 22' long.  After many weeks of planning we came up with the plan below.

We decided to use DCC control rather than the traditional DC control. This would be the first club owned layout to be controlled using DCC. We decided to use the Bachmann Dynamis DCC Control system as this is a system that all three of us use and are familiar with.  Also it proved to be considerably cheaper than comparable systems. This plan was agreed with the Blyth and Tyne Model Railway Society and construction began in early November 2011.

Above you can see left to right Jem Soady, Ian Carty and Myself working

on the assembly of the baseboards on 3rd November 2011. (Photo by Peter Chatt)