LAYOUTS

Past Layouts

NSRMA’s layouts are built to exhibition standard and operated with prototypical realism. Past layouts have modelled NSW government railways, North American and British railways.

NSRMA’s first layout was BRISTOL MIDLAND, modelling British railways, built in 1970 - 1971.
In 1973 BULLAMAKANKA was displayed featuring Australian scenes.
The next layout NSRMA constructed was MAINLINE MK1, an OO gauge layout with a British theme. It was first exhibited in 1980 and was inproved or enlarged each year until it was withdrawn from exhibition in 1990.
In 1996 MAINLINE MK2 was exhibited. It was designed to operate British, Continental and Australian trains iwith mainly British scenery.
NORTH YARD displayed British industrial grim of the 1930's and was exhibited in 1997. An O gauge layout set in an imaginary town near the North Wales - English border. It featured the movement of coal from the mine, by train though a tunnel and then loaded onto canal barges while general freight is sorted in the dockyard.

Dungog

This layout, modelled to a scale of 1:87 in H0 gauge, represents the station of Dungog on the North Coast line between Sydney and Brisbane. Dungog is a small quiet country town, located about 80 km (50 miles) north from Newcastle's main locomotive centre of Broadmeadow. However, its geographic position allowed efficient crew and locomotive operations to be made for the heavy express passenger trains working the North Coast Railway, as it was called in the 1940s.
Dungog was first exhibited in 1999 and sold in 2022 to Brett Watson. The layout is now in Melbourne.

Valley Central

The Valley Central layout is a ‘N’ scale layout which was built in the 1990’s, and donated to the North Shore Railway modellers in 2011, by the Hulme family of Roseville. We believe the layout was extensively exhibited when new and then placed in storage. Our members refurbished the layout, made detailed modifications and a new extension to it and then displayed it many times. Set in the north eastern area of Utah State of U.S.A., The layout portrays the day to day activities of railroading around the Black Rock Coal Mine in the middle of the 20th century. The layout was sold to Alby Anderson.

Bullo Pill

This O-gauge (7mm/foot) layout represents an English scene in the town of Bullo Pill in the county of Gloucestershire in the year circa 1920. Originally, the area was served by a 4-foot-gauge, horse-drawn plateway, built in 1810, principally to carry coal from the Forest of Dean for transhipping to barges on the River Severn.
In 1851 the line was taken over by the South Wales Railway (a subsidiary of the GWR) and converted to broad-gauge. After conversion to standard-gauge in the later years of the 19th century, the Midland Railway also served the area and this is what the layout represents.

The layout is a reasonably-true representation of a tidal inlet from the River Severn (via lock gates), of part of the Bullo Pill township.
A large number of working, mechanical devices were included on the layout so as to add interest to the operation. These include a lifting bridge, wagon and loco turntables and coal droppers.
Lacking space at the club rooms to build Blue Mountains, the layout was moved to the home of an NSRMA member.