MORFA MAWR (ABERATH)

by Trevor Hale

The layout is based circa 1970 on the coast of Cardigan bay, between Aberystwyth and Aberaeron (near Llannon) and consists of a small single platform station with runaround sidings for goods and coal. The later additional siding accomodates the Provender shed which houses foodstuffs amongst other merchandise.

The line was originally planned to be built as a narrow gauge line by the VoR railway, but this never happened. In 1909 plans were forwarded by the LA&NQLR to build a standard gauge railway following the planned VoR route, albeit with a few deviations, and work finally started in 1911 and was completed just before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.

This layout was never planned to be anything more than a EM test track to play trains on at home. In late 2005, it started as 5ft board with a 3ft sector plate, and all that was done was to lay the track and wire it up, whereafter it just laid around doing nothing for a few years.

After some thought and several different ideas, I decided to change the trackwork around a bit and build it up as a scenic layout, which is now 8ft in length with a 4ft fiddle yard. Further images of the rolling stock for the layout please click here.