Thursday, February 27, 2014

For Sale: Clayhanger Yard

The time has come, with 2 exhibitions this month, to part with Clayhanger Yard. I need the storage space for more projects and don't want to leave it to deteriorate when someone else can enjoy the model.

For those who don't remember, the layout was built as a minimum space O gauge shunting plank. At 10 feet long (7ft scenic, 3ft fiddle yard) and 2 1/2 feet wide, it should fit into most peoples homes. You can also get it in the back of a reasonably modest car if the new owners fancy taking it on the road.

Built for and serialised in Hornby Magazine(who are happy for me to sell it)  in 2013 , there are plenty of people who know the model and no secrets about its construction. Plywood baseboards are topped with Peco trackwork and buildings from several sources.

Point operation is manual via rods and can be operated from front or back.

Price £350

The buyer gets the layout, fiddle yard and cassettes, fascia panel and legs.

They don't get a controller (Gaugemaster plug-in will do), rolling stock stock or the fascia supports and lights (I use these on another layout), any details not glued down (the little car and lorry although I'm happy to chuck the later in), or the curtain.

The model can be seen and operated at the Kettering and Leamington shows. If you want, I'm happy to load it into your car at the end of Leamington. If we need to deliver, I'll discuss this at the time.

Basically, this is a nice layout that needs a home. The price covers the track and some of the woodwork. You couldn't build the layout for less.

Personally, I'd love to see it back on the exhibition circuit. As a magazine based layout, it wouldn't be difficult to get booked in to shows, I have one who'd like it already. Were I to do this myself, I'll be honest ans say I'd replace the point operating rods with Peco motors because I prefer these. At the same time I'd ditch 3-link couplings in favour of something automatic. Both are my preferences though rather than essentials - after all, we've exhibited it as it is several times.

On the other hand, if you want a home layout for shuffling wagons around, it would be ideal for this too.

Update: The layout has now been sold.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Phil - not an offer on the layout, but a question about it's construction.

    You mentioned that the points can be operated by manual rod from both sides? I considered doing this on my own layout but as I'm using slide switches to both mechanically move the point and switch the frog polarity it occurred to me there could be problems with short circuiting if one switch clicked over faster than the other.

    How have you overcome this? Do you use a seperate mechanism for switching polarity?

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  2. The points on Clayhanger are operated by rods running under the boards. A microswitch hitting these does the polarity thing. Photos here: http://philsworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/micro-switching-o-guage-points.html

    To be honest, I doubt that there will be an issue with your method, any short circuit will only exist for a tiny fraction of a second if at all.

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  3. Cheers Phil - I mostly worry about DCC shorts cutting out the whole layout/catching fire...but I should probably just experiment and see what happens!

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