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GRANGETOWN, MORFA MAWR (ABERATH), & WEST HIGHLAND LAYOUTS
by Trevor Hale
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Grangetown was a fictious small station in the Wholeflats area just off the A904 to the
East of Grangemouth in Scotland. Set in the early 1970s, it is located at the Southern
edge of the docks, on a line between Falkirk and Boness. The layout consisted of a single
platform station with passing loop, and two small sidings. Trackwork by SMP with copperclad
turnouts and the buildings and structures fabricated from plasticard. Freight services
served by trains from Cadder Yard and from the Perth / Stirling area with coal, food produce
and cement flows, with local trip workings from in and around the docks system.
Passenger traffic featured local services between Falkirk and Boness, usually served by
a Cravens DMU or loco hauled services each day from Stirling and Glasgow Queen St to Boness.
The layout (4ft scenic section) was originally planned for the DEMU 2003 small layout station
competition, but wasn't completed in time. Built to EM gauge, the layout was eventually finished
with improved fiddle yards either end to give more operating potential in such a small space.
After a few show appearances, the layout was sold to Tim Easter and heavily modified.
Morfa Mawr (Aberath) 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, increased to 8ft in length with a 4ft fiddle yard.
West Highland layout - Depicting a remote station on the Scottish West Highland Line based
loosely on Crianlarich in the Loch Laggen area. An acurate model of Crianlarich itself was
considered, but a scaled down scenic area of a 30ft was just too much to contemplate.
With an imaginary link to the Ballaculish to Conell Ferry line, it will employ the use of
non-corridor compartment passenger stock. The large island platform (typical of the area),
features a main station building with subway access and adjacent signal cabin.
At the other end of the station there is a single track viaduct.
The baseboards are all constructed from plywood, using an open frame design with risers to the trackbed.
Pointwork is C&L individual components with copperclad strengtheners, Tortoise
point motors for remote operation, and wire in tube for the yard and loco shed.
There is a small goods yard and a near derelict steam shed for the stabling of engineers
wagons and the occasional loco.
