'009' GAUGE LAYOUT ISLE OF STONER
Departure from the truth
Next stop: the Isle of Stoner – anarrow gauge Channel Island fantasy Next stop: the Isle of Stoner – anarrow gauge Channel Island fantasy layout from the fertile imagination of ‘OO9’ fanatic John Wooden.
Words: Chris Gadsby
Photography: Chris Nevard
A hundredmiles south of Newquay is, well, not a lot really. OK, that’s not strictly true; there’s a lot of water and occasionally maybe some fish. What there definitely isn’t, though, is an elaborate narrow gauge railway network with several stations and branch lines, unless you’ve found yourselves on John Wooden’s fictitious Isle of Stoner and its line snaking its way through the landscape.
If you have found your way onto the fantastical island, you’ve numerous options as to where to go, as John has been repeatedly expanding the layout over the past eight years.
“When I first built ‘Isle of Stoner’ it consisted of a 3ft by 4ft board with the track in a simple loop, and this was my first proper layout in the 2000s, but I quickly became bored with this and tried to add extensions. The decision was soon taken that this was awkward and messy, so I scrapped it and started again from scratch! Even that didn’t prevent me from making mistakes, though, as the new ‘Isle of Stoner’ began life as two, four-foot baseboards that were joined in an ‘L’ shape. What did I decide to do? Make the join on a curve and in a tunnel!”