Layout Idea - Mallaig Junction Yard

37427 returning to Mallaig Junction Yard from Corpach Paper Mill with a trip freight on the 7 October 2005.

I've been doing a lot more work on the index of WH photos mentioned in previous posts - I'll update the file posted on the Scottish Modellers eGroup files section (see link) shortly. I've been indexing the photos from Tom Noble's Mallaig Extension book (see the review from an earlier post). I also watched Train Crazy's "British Rail Remembered 4 - Class 37s in Scotland Part 1" DVD yesterday, which has good footage of the yard at Mallaig Junction.

The yard would make an excellent layout - it's fairly compact, and has interesting operations. Every freight arriving at Fort William has to run around and/or shunt here, and all the Extension passenger trains pass though the yard. The junction is at the west end, so the yard runs parallel to the Extension. Most pictures taken at this location show all sorts of interesting wagons in the yard, including a wide array of engineer's stock.

It's another idea for the layout, although the rate of change here has been a little faster than in some other parts of the WHL system and so one would have to either be pretty time-frame specific or accept a few compromises. Here, the best period would be 1980-87 (prior to the introduction of RETB), when there were fairly few changes in infrastructure, but the stock changed from Class 27s on everything at the start of the period, through the 37/0 introduction, the large logo 37/0s, the start of the steam service, and the arrival of the 37/4s. The transitions between 27s and 37/0s and 37/0s and 37/4s were quite sudden, so there are limited excuses for having both on the layout at once, although a class 20 was present through most of the period as the trip loco, and this would offer a little variety.

More on this idea soon...