BACKGROUND:

Gravel Road is my most recent narrow-gauge layout - built to a nominal 4mm scale (4mm to the imperial foot).

Built to strict French GEMME narrow-gauge modelling standards, the visible part of the layout (above) had to be no longer than 630mm, and no wider than 135mm.

How did I get this? Simple!

The GEMME exhibition rules say you can only build a layout that's track gauge multiplied by 70 (for length) and track gauge multiplied by 15 (for width).

As I used N-scale track, with a 9mm gauge, that means I only had 9mm X 70 (for a length of 630mm) and 9mm X 15 (for a width of 135) to work with . . .

The result? An extremely light and portable layout that can be carried under one arm. It can be set up and be operating in less than five minutes.

I cheated somewhat by making the baseboard slightly wider - behind the backscene - allowing for trains to depart from the layout to the unseen quarry.

Yet Gravel Road tells a story - and provides a reasonable amount of operational variety . . .

THEME:

Gravel Road is a hard-working, yet down-at-heel 2ft-gauge tramway, bringing gravel for road-making and industrial purposes from a nearby quarry to unloading staithes close to the main highway.

Road trucks back in under the staithes, and the gravel is dropped from the tramway's sturdy 'home-engineered' hopper cars.

The two diesel locos are second-hand former Queensland sugar cane motive power that has seen better days, and the rolling stock consists of four hopper cars and a single per-way flat car.

Buildings are few, and utilitarian - a single road engine shed built from corrugated steel (also second hand), a small weatherboard yard office and the timber-framed staithes.

The only real concession to a 'corporate brand' is that the engine shed and yard office are both painted in the same colours - green for walls and red for roofs.

There's also a small Shell fuel tank - positioned just outside the engine shed - to fuel the locos.

LAYOUT DESIGN:

Gravel Road consists of several short lengths of Peco Crazy Track, and two Peco Crazy Track switches – set against each other.

Why Peco? Why not?! It’s arguably the most reliable commercial trackwork available anywhere in the world.

Wiring on a layout so small is minimal, and I control the trains through an old Train Traders tranny, running an OzTrains controller built many, many years ago here in Sydney by my old mate, Anton Bognar.

OPERATIONS:

The train arrives on the property from a small gap in the backscene board, immediately behind the yard office.

It then pulls forward to the short siding (spur) behind the tiny engine shed.

The crew then throw the switches, allowing the loco to slowly propel the loaded cars back down towards the staithes adjacent to the yard office.

Once emptied, the loco pulls the cars forward again, behind the engine shed. When switches are reset, the short train is pushed slowly back to the quarry (behind the backscene).

Occasionally, the spare loco (housed in the engine shed) is brought forward with the flatcar, to do whatever per-way trains do on such dilapidated tramways!

ROSTER:

A small layout like Gravel Road needs only a few pieces of rolling stock – as it would in real life.

There are two small diesels (ex-Queensland cane fields, and almost past their use-by dates) and several battered bogie skips for carrying the crushed gravel from quarry to staithes. There’s also a single bogie flat car, used on per-way maintenance (whenever that’s thought necessary –usually when derailments are more frequent than operating!)

The locos were hand-built years ago by a Queensland modeller; they roll on old Plymouth six-wheel chassis . . . rough, somewhat noisy, but reliable.

The the other items were out of my junk box. The gravel cars are former N-scale ore cars, stripped and repainted. The solebars have been widened to make them appear more narrow-gauge.

I also fitted them with InterMountain N-scale trucks.

The flat is an ancient whitemetal HOn2 ½ kit, also fitted with InterMountain trucks. I added strip timber planking and weathered it.

STRUCTURES:

Gravel Road has only two buildings – the corrugated steel-clad, one-road engine shed, and the small yard office at the other end.

The shed was built using Ratio 4mm-scale corrugated sheet; I used the same materials for the walls and roof. I also used smaller pieces for the doors. Not sure about the windows: I've had them (and more yet to use) in my scrap box for years. I think they're American HO scale.

The result, though, is a fairly typical Australian-looking building.

The yard office is a sawn-down 4mm-scale British signal box with a corrugated steel roof fitted.

The staithes are built from scraps of scale timber from my junk box, and the corrugated steel fencing was also from my junk box. I clipped it into sheet-sized strips, and used Liquid Nails adhesive to secure these to two scale timber beams – top and bottom.

All the trees are also hand-made, using twisted welding cable wire covered in Modelling medium. I find this easier to work with than, say, plaster, and it’s better able to handle the rough and tumble of the layout being moved.

The vehicles, rubbish skips and pieces of rubbish and broken equipment scatted around the site are all from my junk box, and seem to be recirculated each and every time I build an industrial layout like this!

And God knows where the power poles came from! But a lick of paint after more than 25 years of patiently waiting in a scrap box and they look as good as new.

Perhaps the most interesting – and oldest – piece is the Shell fuel tank near the engine shed. This comes from an original Lone Star 000-‘scale’ diecast toy, made and sold in the early 1960s. Somehow it seems to fit in with the small size of the overall layout.

FINAL COSTS:

And what has Gravel Road cost me?

* One piece of ply (for the base) - an offcut from 'spares' pile in the back of the garage.

* Three sheets of what we can Canite, a soft, easily cut material, sandwiched together, and contoured (also for the base) - more offcuts. This material has good sound-deadening qualities.

* Hand made trees and structures - also from scraps from my junk box

* Scenic materials - a mix of ancient Woodland Scenics ground covers and teased green carpet wool fibres

* Locos - each cost about $90

* Rolling stock items - all second-hand, about $10 all up

* Track and switches - about $50

* Road vehicles - bought so long ago, I can't remember

* Track 'ballast' - finely sifted gravel from the side of roads around NSW

* Construction time - on and off - about six months

Overall experience? Priceless!