Quarry Halt is a small "00" gauge layout featuring a small halt on a single line somewhere in the Midlands in the 1950s and early 1960s. The local mill and output of a nearby quarry are the mainstay of the traffic, along with milk products from the local farms to the creameries in the conurbations. The halt was constructed primarily to serve the needs of workers at the quarry. Operation is conventional DC, with points and signals mostly worked by the tried and tested bicycle spoke method - but see below.
This layout is available for exhibitions, contact us on aandcmrs@gmail.com
Latest: We had another successful outing for the layout at Chesham on March 2nd 2025. We had been invited by the Chesham Model Railway Society to participare in their 50th Anniversay Exhibition.
We had had several further issues with the layout at the Amersham Heritage Day in September 2024, and it was decided that we would refurbish the layout for Chesham. This involved adding signals and starting the move to replacing point and signal operation by servo motors. The idea behind this 'automation' was to reduce the operational load at an exhibition. Signals that are controlled by the routes set by points, and returning to 'off' as the trains pass would save operators having to remember to operate them during bustle of an exhibition.
We decided to opt for modules from the the Model Electronic Railway Group, a society of like minded model railwayers who have delevoped a 'bus' system that enable quite complex operations on four wires laid around the baseboards. RogerPr and MikeB developed a system and got to grips with all the programming that is needed to make the whole system work.
Tim has spent several months making up signals to populate the layout based on advive from an ex-BR signalman. They are all servo controlled and are built on a brass base that carries the servo and can be 'plugged' into square holes in the baseboard. This avoids damage to them when we are transporting the layout to exhibitions. Each signal structure is then plugged into the controlling modules. Our new member PeterS improved the scenery where it had worn badly with help from additional trees fro RogerPr.There was a lot of work to do before the Chesham Exhibition and not everything has been updated.
Not all the 'automation' worked for the exhibition, but there were mostly behind the scenes issues which we don't think impacted on what the audience saw. Certainly we seemed to have been a popular layout to visit.
Chesham MRS should be pleased with the attendance as it never slackened throughout the day.
