
Genesis
After a series of minor meetings amongst the membership, it has been felt that it is time to start thinking of a new layout for the club to build in P4.
One evening the Chairman came charging into the clubroom, full of vim and vigour - strange behaviour for a cricket lover - holding a copy of the Great Western Journal in his hand. Having thrust said journal into my hand and told to read the article on Little Mill Junction. This area, by the way, is just some seven miles from my home, so, I read...and the same light that had dawned on Dave suddenly turned on in me!
From there it was merely a question of time before this fledgling came before the membership to see if it had enough merit to be turned into a reality...the rest, as they say, is history.
What are we aiming for?
The layout will:
Well, its the double track mainline that ran from Newport up to Hereford, Salop and beyond. So there are expresses (Manchester- Plymouth), more local stuff (Hereford - Cardiff) and branch and workmens' trains for the factory at Glascoed on the branch. With freight in both directions, fitted and unfitted, and parcels trains too, there's plenty to run through. Plus the yard was used as a sub-yard of Pontypool Road in the down (to Newport) direction, So freights would stop, reverse into the sidings, exchange traffic and depart, giving plenty of activity (or scope for cock-ups, depending on how things are going).
That's the idea, but there's plenty of stock required, but all the baseboards are build but we still need to lay more track
For fuller information see the original inspirational article from the Great Western Journal No. 65 Page 51
The following file is a proposed track diagram and is a good representation of what Little Mill looked like, though there has been some space saving, largely with the lengths of sidings within the yard itself. So, how big is this to be? Well, the front scenic section will be 12.6m (42') long, with a seven foot radius curve to the holding sidings at the back of the layout. We want to run full length trains through a stretch of countryside, with the added interest of activity on the Glascoed branch and the yard itself.
What research is being carried out?
Help!
We are asking for help with this project - it would be foolish of us to think that we can do this without it - so, if you are willing to help, in any way, be it information gathered or imparted or help on the layout build itself we would love to hear from you. There is a list of contacts on this website or you can add an entry to the Little Mill Junction section of the Discussions area. All future developments on this exciting project will be updated from this page.
In Spring 2020 the club decided that it didn't have the resources to complete LMJ to the standard we would want to achieve and so we will concentrate our 4mm scale efforts on Abervavenny Blackbroook.