good evening,
not sure if this is the correct place but couldn't see any other locations on the forum for an introductory post or a newbie corner, so apologies if this is in the wrong place.
with that out the way, I'd like to introduce my project, I have a collection of OO but unable to build a suitable layout for that at home at this current point in time, so after too much promoting on the model rail replacement podcast and a moment of weakness I took a look at oo9 and noticed there's not a lot of narrow-gauge up here in the North East. Eventually I stumbled across a nearly railway, the "North Holderness Light Railway".
The North Holderness was a proposed light railway by the NER. The idea to connect smaller villages and agriculture in the Holderness Area to the Yorkshire Coast Line just North of Beverly. The line never went ahead and a bus route was introduced from 1903 (and ran by the NER/LNER until 1933). Around 1919 the idea of reintroducing the route as a railway was revisited with the idea of developing it as a Narrow Gauge Line to mitigate some of the marshy land in the area. The NER would go on to instruct Darlington works to produce a 2ft Gauge loco based on the J72, a pair of coaches and even appeared on the NER tile maps installed at stations.
While a little bit south for me, it did provide me with an area of the country a bit closer to home and a bonus connection to the railway area I'm "modelling" in OO. So the plan has been formed to create a small layout based in the Yorkshire area, Ideally a loop so I can let a train just run while i work on other things like scenery or weathering etc. as things develop I'll look to either get some of the coaches designed and 3D printed if i can find more detailed drawings (currently only able to find sketches) or use some RtR coaches and give them a Teak finish myself. Loco may be more difficult i suspect so will be using RtR locos, a lot of them seemed to get sold to industries and the likes so not beyond the realms of possibilities that the NHLR may end up buying some in as the NER were not exactly well versed in narrow gauge operations.
I have started with a PECO track pack, a bachmann loco and looking for a nice layout I can settle on that will allow me to leave a train running but also have a bit of operational interest, maybe scenic one side and an exchange yard or dock side on the other. any suggestions, tips or tricks will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Luke
Good Morning Luke!
Well it looks as if I'm the first one to reply to you - 12 hours after you "arrived and announced yourself" (but to be fair, a large part of those hours were when most in this part of the world were in bed, so on behalf of everyone in the Society may I offer a big welcome to you and hope that you get a great deal of enjoyment and fulfilment in the new direction of your hobby!
There are a lot of very experienced NG modellers in the Society and indeed on here so I am confident that you will get lots of suggestions, tips and tricks as you put it, in due course. I'll kick off with a very simple one: "Keep it simple" at least to begin with - this has been my own failing over many years! On several occasions I have started off with a simple plan, which has grown out of all proportion from the original idea, eg a simple passing station with 2 sidings (ie a 4-point layout) then gets a few more sidings, then a loco depot big enough to rival York, throw in a harbour, a branch line, a juncion to a private preserved railway to cater for every ready to run and 3D loco in the world and somehow the "plan" has been overwhelmed - can't think why.............
Finally from myself - interesting that you have focussed on the North Holderness - if you have a trawl through the 009 News archives that are accessible on the Society website, 20 or more years ago, one of our most experienced and prolific 009 modellers, Charles Insley, published his own input on this idea complete with a photo of his own scratchbuilt loco that he had created for this railway.
Best Wishes for happy 009 modelling,
Mick Thornton.
PS - you didn't say exactly how far north you actually are - except a clue was that you appear to be to the north of Darlington! There is a long standing and active group of enthusiastic NG modellers who meet quite regularly, called the Tyne Tees Group - contact details in 009 News. You might like to consider touching base with them?
good afternoon,
Thank you for the reply, the keep it simple is a good plan, I've caught myself going from a simple track plan from the track plan book, to cattle docks, maintenance yards and more. So I think this is definitely something to think about and reign myself in abit at times.
Thank you for the tip on Charles Insley output, I'll have to go and do some digging and see if I can find myself some readying material for the festive period!
I'm from Cramlington a little town/village north of Newcastle, so I'll go looking for the Tyne Tess group, it would be nice to touch base with fellow modellers and see what they are modelling,
Thanks,
Luke
Yes, welcome Luke.
If you are able to log in to Member's Area on the web site then you should be able to see the section with the archive of back issues of the 009 News. There are examples of small continous run layouts to be found there. Area groups and especially member days can be a good source of advice and way of seeing what others do.
Quote from: Graeme Dunbar on December 12, 2025, 15:11Yes, welcome Luke.
If you are able to log in to Member's Area on the web site then you should be able to see the section with the archive of back issues of the 009 News. There are examples of small continous run layouts to be found there. Area groups and especially member days can be a good source of advice and way of seeing what others do.
Thank you for the tip, I've had a look at the member layouts section on the main page, some fantastic ones, I've seen a couple have track plans but most don't so not the easiest to figure out some times, I'd love to get to a standard or any of them tbh
There is one layout in particular that shows just what can be done with a small layout and some of the techniques involved - Nixnie by Ted Polet.
https://www.009dutch.nl/archive/2011/pages/enixnie.htm (https://www.009dutch.nl/archive/2011/pages/enixnie.htm)
A novel feature is the 'Hagrid Door' that provides a way of adding stock and removing it to fiddle yard or even train cassettes.
There is a video too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1KiAyVVaNM
Quote from: Graeme Dunbar on December 13, 2025, 11:18There is one layout in particular that shows just what can be done with a small layout and some of the techniques involved - Nixnie by Ted Polet.
https://www.009dutch.nl/archive/2011/pages/enixnie.htm (https://www.009dutch.nl/archive/2011/pages/enixnie.htm)
A novel feature is the 'Hagrid Door' that provides a way of adding stock and removing it to fiddle yard or even train cassettes.
There is a video too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1KiAyVVaNM
Thank you for this, i think this is a great idea and uses a similar idea i had of using a back scene to divide my board to get a bit more scene in the layout. Nice to see how effectively it has work.
Quote from: MickT on December 12, 2025, 11:46Finally from myself - interesting that you have focussed on the North Holderness - if you have a trawl through the 009 News archives that are accessible on the Society website, 20 or more years ago, one of our most experienced and prolific 009 modellers, Charles Insley, published his own input on this idea complete with a photo of his own scratchbuilt loco that he had created for this railway.
thanks for this tip, still looking for this specific article but found loads of good articles on there to help with my project.
combined with the Nixnie layout suggested above i'm going to use what i've learnt to crack on with my layout planning
Quote from: L Jackson on December 16, 2025, 22:46thanks for this tip, still looking for this specific article but found loads of good articles on there to help with my project
Whilst I'm not 100% sure Charlie Insley's article (on scratch building a North Holderness loco) may have been in Railway Modeller rather than 009 News...
You may well be right on that Julien, but I thought I could remember seeing it in both RM and 009 News. If I can track it down, I'll post the reference on here. (Unless Charlie reads this and I'm sure he would know when and where it was published himself!)
Mick
*
Charles Insley: North Holderness light Railway 0-6-0T, Railway Modeller, Feb 2005, p.102.
CP
Quote from: cp.409067 on December 17, 2025, 18:32*
Charles Insley: North Holderness light Railway 0-6-0T, Railway Modeller, Feb 2005, p.102.
CP
thanks for that, gives me a bit of a wider search area