Sorrento is a small fictional town in the northeastern US, just large enough, in the 1970s and 1980s, to justify a small rail-served industrial park on its outskirts. The railroad is on a Conrail branch line but uses a mix of rolling stock and locomotives from various companies including CSX, Chessie and SOO.
In many respects the layout is like my previous American TT scale layout, Naples Street, which was featured in Continental Modeller in July 2018. The track design is almost identical and the overall dimensions are very similar. The layout also reuses the rolling stock, and some of the scenic items, of its predecessor.
So why bother? Firstly, Naples Street was a bit on the heavy side for one person to carry to and from shows. Secondly, I came to regard the add-on fiddle yard as a bit of a nuisance and wanted something integrated. Thirdly, I wasn't happy with the friction-based turnout switching mechanisms, which could get a bit stiff. Fourthly, I'd had the layout for over five years and was getting a bit fed up with it.
The clincher came when Peco released its TT 1:120 track in 2022 - all of a sudden the HOm track I'd used on Naples Street, simply because it's what I had available, didn't look right at all. I just had to start again.
Overall the scenic part of the layout is six inches longer than Naples Street, and with a lower backscene, four turnouts instead of six, two industries fewer, and the finer profile track ties of the new Peco track, I think it presents a more open, less cluttered appearance.
There are two baseboards, made from balsa wood frames three inches wide by half an inch thick and topped with two layers of 5mm foamboard and a layer of thin cork sheet. I have used balsa before and it is remarkably sturdy. The main board is 36in. by 9in. and the second board is 18in. by 9in., giving a total length of 54in. Being very light and in two sections, the layout is very easy for one person to carry, which was my main goal as the layout was built with exhibitions in mind and I usually attend those I get invited to on my own.
I had to brace the layout underneath at intervals with more lengths of balsa to cure a slight dishing of the foamboard tops, a problem I hadn’t anticipated as I had glued two layers together opposite sides facing in the expectation of preventing warping.
Apart from using a few panel pins to hold the braces in place while the glue was drying, the board materials are held together entirely by PVA. The two sections fit together by means of wooden dowels glued into the ends and are held firm by two small clamps.
Each baseboard section sits on short legs which are braced together and raise the layout about eight inches above table level.
To make switching a bit easier I added a six-inch extension to the fiddle yard, which simply clamps onto the end of the layout when needed. With this in place each of the two fiddle yard tracks can hold three cars plus a loco.
Track and turnouts are from the new Peco TT 1:120 range: large radius turnouts on the layout proper and small radius in the fiddle yard. They are the Unifrog type, and very impressive. My American twin-truck locos run over them without a hiccup, such that I haven’t needed to power the frogs. Unifrog turnouts are not self-isolating like the other Peco types, which means that apart from the frogs all track is powered at all times. If you are running more than one loco at once on DC you will need some kind of isolating method for sidings, but with DCC, or if you run only one loco at a time (both of which apply in my case), this isn’t a problem - that is, until you forget to switch the points and get a derailment. But of course, I never do this.
Electrical continuity between the baseboard sections is provided by conductive metal strips which clip around the baseboard ends and contact each other when the baseboard sections are pressed together.
The turnouts are switched from the back of the layout by wire in tube.
The fiddle yard section is arranged as a crossover, and although it is mostly screened from public view at normal viewing angles, for aesthetic reasons I have given its left side some scenic treatment for people peeking under the bridge.
Drone view showing the track plan
The layout only sees one loco running at a time. This is either one of four SW1200s from Czech company MTB or one of three GP9s made from Lionel static display models which I motorised, two with Tillig truck and gear parts and can motors, and one with a complete chassis from Lok-n-Roll in Germany.
All locos have been fitted with DCC decoders; one has sound via a sugarcube speaker and any two of the others can be made to sound via a couple of under-baseboard MRC diesel sounders set to the same address.
The sixteen freight cars are a combination of kits, 3D prints and ready to run, all from European suppliers. They comprise tankers, boxcars of various sizes, hoppers, gondolas and a flat car. In truth the smaller boxcars belong to an earlier era than I pretend the model is set in. They all came with roofwalks and I removed these, firstly to help keep up the pretence of a later era, and secondly because I don't like roofwalks anyway; I think they make a boxcar look somewhat untidy. These models were not cheap and I did the job with some trepidation, but I don't think my butchery has harmed them. I also shortened the side ladders on a couple of them, and the surgery is only noticeable if you look closely.
Coupling and uncoupling are done manually; couplers are a mix of Kadee 713, 714, Micro Trains 1015 and proprietary. They are all mutually compatible but I prefer the Kadees.
Like many modellers, I suspect, I approach ballasting with gritted teeth. I first brushed WD40 onto the moving parts of the turnouts to make sure they didn't get glued up, then used PVA mixed roughly 50-40-10 with water and isopropyl alcohol. No matter how neatly I spread my ballast it always looks a mess after the PVA has set and much tidying up is needed. Painting the sides of the track is also a bore so I only do the facing side.
The rest of the ground is either concrete roadway or various kinds of greenery and earth scatter colours. Some of the ballast is also sprinkled with scatter to give it a run-down look.
The grade crossing is made from cardboard and has a slight camber made by bending it over a narrower strip of cardboard underneath.
The industrial buildings are loosely based on photos of north American prototypes. Like the road bridge they are scratchbuilt from card and polystyrene. I had thought of adapting and reusing the buildings from Naples Street but in the end I decided to make new ones. The only leftover I couldn't bear to part with is a resin casting of a 3mm scale BR coach that somehow got transported across the ocean, presumably by a nostalgic ex-pat. It has been given a makeover and attracts a regular stream of hungry customers as Clara & Will's.
The road bridge helps to form a scenic break between the main layout and the fiddle yard, and also helps to hide the join between the baseboards. I have partially "scenicked" the fiddle yard to make it look like part of the layout proper if anyone peeks under the bridge.
A card panel, partly painted and partly covered with polystyrene brick sheet, forms a backdrop to one of the half-relief industries and completes the view block to the fiddle yard.
Despite the noise from the trains, Clara & Will's is a popular meeting spot for locals. Friends have a chat while a little boy waves at the passing train.
The backscene is made from two layers of thick card covered with poster paint after a failed attempt with 5mm foamboard which warped beyond recovery when painted. I had expected foamboard to bend when painted but in my previous experience it has gone flat again when dry. Not so this time - it was left with both horizontal and vertical curves which were impossible to straighten adequately.
Some repair work is being done to the sign at Shard Glassware.
The chimney at Foundation Building Supplies is fitted with a Seuthe smoke unit which can be made to spew out its fumes on the press of a button that can be operated by spectators. A timer unit switches it off again after about a minute. The chimney and timer unit both need their own dedicated power supplies, each of which has a different electrical specification.
Now that the layout is complete it has occurred to me that the road bridge and the grade crossing with the rather prominent sand silo nearby divide it into three roughly equal parts. To the left are the team track and Community Produce; to the right in front of the fiddle yard is Shard Glassware; and in the middle are Foundation Building Supplies, Clara & Will's diner, a defunct paper mill, and a small wooded area.
Someone has left a car to rust outside the now defunct Rolly Paper Co.
I have been using a Roco Multimaus to control my trains for about ten years. Lately it started giving sporadic errors, either when switched on or randomly stopping trains during operation. So I decided to get a backup and chose Easiest DCC Controller from Bill Cuthbert. This is a low-cost Arduino-based system driven by a mobile phone app and it works very well. It has advantages over the Multimaus in that it can read CVs and also address CVs over 255. But needless to say since I bought it I found out what the problem with the Multimaus was - a dodgy RJ12 cable which connects the handset to the controller unit. I bought a replacement cable and it cured the problem, so most of the time I stick to the Multimaus.
There are three industries plus a team track, all of which have room for two spots. Together they see deliveries of canned and dried food, coal, sand, gravel, fuel oil, paint and various construction items, while glass products, chemical waste and empties are moved out. The silo is used to store sand for Foundation Building Supplies, which then bags it up for customers.
Most train moves involve taking cars onto the layout from the yard or moving them back off. Moves between industries occur occasionally, either to deliver fuel oil to more than one location with the same tank car, or to move a car to the team track for cleaning when an industry has unloaded it.
Occasionally a car will have to be left at an off-spot if there is no room for it at its final destination.
A peek beneath the bridge at a passing boxcar
If the yen to play trains takes hold of me I sometimes use a home-made car card/waybill system. I find this more enjoyable than working off a switchlist, though it does entail a pause in proceedings when the waybills have to be turned.
That said, as with previous layouts I also sometimes use my self-written Switcher program to automatically generate switching moves based on the requirements of the industries and the freight cars available. This is a PC-only application free for anyone to use by contacting me at showerydan@live.com.
At a pinch the layout can accommodate ten cars including those parked at off-spots, plus six in the fiddle yard - but this makes switching a very tight squeeze, and using fewer cars makes for more leisurely operating.
For shows, the "Exhibition Switch Job" comes in useful. This uses nine or ten cars in constant circulation, which minimises pauses in operation while people are watching by eliminating the need for moving cars by hand on and off the layout. I make the occasional manual swap for a bit of a change.
Rod Shaw, 2024
Other layouts:
Briargate - British 3mm Scale Lightwood - Continental TT Ecclesford - British 3mm Scale
Yorkford, PA - US HO Naples Street - US TT Northfield Harbor - US HO