I’ve taken the opportunity this year to visit the Railnuts WCML layout in Chester Cathedral. This 68 Feet long model is a great model and features a number of the elements that I wanted to include on Kilsby Drift. As well as seeing lots of different trains running up and down I wanted to get a sense of how the longer layout looked and the length of trains in use. I didn’t measure the longer ones but I think they would have been over 20 feet long with some very long container trains the day I was there. As well as Thomas for younger visitors there were also a couple of steam driven goods trains and some BR Blue on display along with the modern units including the Avanti branded pendolinos. The northern end of the layout with 3 bridges, cuttings and the overpass was particularly impressive.
The images of the bridges and cuttings were one of the things I really wanted to see. I’ve been up to Rugby and up and down to Long Buckby passing the DIRFT site but have not had a proper look at the bridges. Some great bridge building on the layout and great use of different types of catenary is shown as well. Whilst not in use on the layout and with most of the stock pantograph down the overall impression and quality of the work looked really good. The exit from Kilsby Tunnel was very interesting as I hadn’t seen this from the train.
The electronics I think were not working correctly. Although the track detection modules were showing the trains in the blocks I’m not sure the DCC addresses were reporting correctly and it wasn’t as clear as I had expected from the online previews. Interesting though and given my challenges to get Railcom working on a much smaller layout still very impressive.
A great day out and a very pleasant way to spend a few hours, highly recommended and only a couple of weeks left to go now.
GRC Railways 