The Apple Valley light railway was my first Gn15 layout. The first version of the plan was entered in the small layout design group first competition where though there were no official winners and loosers was acknowledged the best plan. I was pretty proud of myself. All those years spent doodling in Maths class had come to some fruition. The plan was even featured in 2004 issue of Kalmbachs "Model Railroad Planning". The next stage was to build it or something similar. I went for the something similar and developed the idea a bit the central feature of the traintable was still there, I just added the end of a passing loop to the plan. The layout was built from pink insulation foam, which was ultimately to be the layouts downfall. For as the mod roc plaster bandage used for the scenery dried it pulled the ends of the layout inwards and consequently upwards so the layout had a bowed shape to it. Running was impossible and it was pretty quickly scrapped. These photos are all that remains.

The Apple Valley Railway could be a busy place as this picture illustrates

Click on the thumbnail and a larger version opens in a new window.
     
     
   
     
As this was my first exercise in a totally new scale (Gn15) I stuck as much as possible with materials I was familiar with. The track was all PECO O:16.5 crazy track. Despite the small overall size 4' x 18" operation could be quite hectic. The key to this was the Lazy Susan traintable that was in the centre of the layout. This took interchangeable cassettes that could be lined up with any of the roads. The red loco is my first attempt at scratch building a Ransomes and Rapier. I'll write a bit more about that in the Locomotives section, same goes for the railcar. For the moment just enjoy the pictures of this fun little layout. I'm actually quite nostalgic for it now just making the pages up.