‘N’ GAUGE LAYOUT CULTHWAITE
Long-distance running
Looking to buck the trend of shunting layouts, Phil Mason wanted an exhibition layout that gave his models plenty of room to stretch their legs.
Words: Chris Gadsby
Photography: Chris Nevard
“ What makes this layout great?
Phil has achieved everything he set out to with ‘Culthwaite’. He doesn’t have many points that can go wrong, and the layout is all about keeping models moving. They may be more frequent than on the real ‘Settle & Carlisle’ but at an exhibition when you want people to look at your layout, ‘movement stops movement’!”
The International N Gauge Show (TINGS) is a large, two-day affair held at the Warwickshire Event Centre every autumn. This year, the show takes place over the weekend of September 9 ‐10 and, as always, there’ll be a full range of modern image, steam, continental and American layouts on show, along with displays from various modelling societies and practical demonstrations.
Long-time readers of Model Rail will know that we preview the exhibition every year by featuring one of the layouts that will be at TINGS, and this year we visited Phil Mason and his 8ft by 2ft 6in layout ‘Culthwaite’, based on the famous Settle-Carlisle line.
“I was inspired by the less frequently modelled northern part of the Settle-Carlisle – particularly Culgaith but with a bit of Armathwaite (including the curved platforms and buildings) thrown in. The layout build began thanks to a comment from a viewer at our club exhibition a year or so earlier. He told me that there were some nice layouts but that there wasn’t a lot going on. Looking around I realised he was right, in that there was a lot of shunting but not a lot of running. I decided to buck that trend and set about designing a layout which would focus on running trains over three 4ft boards, although this had to be reduced to two to fit it all in my car. The result is two loops independent from each other, with a four-road fiddleyard per loop at the back with space for about a dozen trains in total.”