Normanton & St Kilda Railway
The Normanton and St Kilda Railway was built by the late Bob Cuthbertson of Dunedin, in New Zealand. This was Bob’s second layout, started in the mid 1970s. It is 16’ x 5’ and features a double sided central backscene, double track continuous main line, large junction station, single track branch and a terminal station.
The four baseboards are softboard on a framework of particle board, held together by coach bolts, with legs of 1” pipe. Scenery is the traditional dyed lint with flock, and rock faces made from expanded polystyrene carved about with a hot soldering iron then painted. Buildings and accessories are mainly cut down 4mm items. There is flood-lighting in the marshalling yard, lots of building lights, and colour light signals on the main line.
Track is built to TT-3 standards, with rail glued to thin sleeper strip set on a thick grey card to represent ballast. The sleeper strip was punched from black photographic card, using a specialised machine Bob made. At one sleeper per revolution of the hand crank and something over 15,000 sleepers on the layout, this would have taken his daughters a long time! Rail joints are simply butt soldered, and aligned without any connection at baseboard joins. Train control is from 6 H&M units with common return and modified cab control, and point control is a mix of H&M motors plus hand operation by rod or cord and return spring.
Bob ran the layout as 1950s BR and he made some ingenious Tri-ang loco conversions, e.g. a WR 1366 class dock tank from a Jinty. After Bob’s death in 1983 the layout passed to late John Holloway. John lived in Auckland, nearly 900 miles away from Dunedin. The layout was wedged unprotected on top of someone else’s furniture and mattresses in a housemoving truck. It arrived undamaged!
Over the next 10 years the Auckland 3mm Society group exhibited often at local shows, sometimes the whole layout and sometimes just the country half with some fiddle yards built to match. The layout hadn’t been designed for exhibitions and it was very high maintenance; however it was always a hit, mainly because of the unusual scale, the many working lights, and John’s habit of cramming smoke units into his locos. As well as lots of Tri-ang John had a large continental TT collection, so he often anticipated the Channel Tunnel. John also made military models, so the roads were often clogged with tank transporters, and the marshalling yards with war machines like rail-mounted guns.
In the mid 1990s John moved to a smaller house and the layout went into storage. It’s been brought out just once since, for a 2011 NZ Hornby Collectors’ Association meeting, where it ran surprisingly well The photos come from that event and show a mix of original Tri-ang, some of Bob’s conversions and even (whisper it) one member’s 00n3 stock!
Bob Lack
18 July 2016