In March 2020 we decided to create a group modular layout based around 900mm x 400mm Grainge and Hodder baseboards. This would feature a mainline running from baseboard to baseboard and branchlines on each module, each branchline separated from the mainline by an isolation section. This would give each of us freedom to create, but freedom always comes with constraints – not least the challenge of working within the limited baseboard size.
We needed strict specifications, so Simon Elam set about creating a template, taking inspiration from the Beds and Bucks 009 Group and from several others who have boldly gone before.
Click on the icon to read the standards 
The first public outing of the modules will be at the Group's Open Day on 25th June 2022 at The Green, Steventon, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX13 6RR
The specification was refined somewhat as construction progressed, as unanticipated problems emerged: for example, how to join modules across metal edging on folding tables, and how to overcome age-related sagging on many tables encountered in village halls (not ignoring, of course, the age-related sagging we all suffer from).
We agreed to operate each module from the back and, although never a requirement, some of us added backscenes. One ‘rule’ was that there should be no separation as the mainline meandered from board to board. Endboards can complete the story of single modules but introduce separation, and we want viewers to see along the whole layout, bringing the modules together rather than separating them. We also anticipate different open days will necessitate different module permutations, possibly arranged in a single line, or in an L-shape or a U-shape.
Still, custom has it that every 009 creation inhabits its own microcosm. So it is with ours, where not surprisingly some modules are designed to have a life beyond open days and exhibitions. The result, we hope, is diversity within an overall semi-unified structure. Keith Hicks’ Burdrop Basin, for example, comprises two 900mm x 400mm boards, enabling it to serve as a stand-alone layout as well as part of the Oxfordshire whole. The basin is a rundown industrial site where narrow gauge tracks meet a canal. In the world of the basin, some effort has been expended to replace dilapidated structures, although economic constraints mean progress has been slow. The buildings all exist somewhere in Britain and are scratch built, most with internal lighting run through dimmers. Points use wire-in-tube, and a swing bridge across the canal currently awaits electrification to control its opening. ‘Home’ locos are RC, although the mainline has electrical connections to neighbouring modules.
Stephen Rainsbury transports us to Parkwood Farm, where a spur separates hop fields (Faller) and orchards (Busch) from an Oast house (Skaledale). The spur ran from a line that Colonel Stephens built to link small towns and businesses to the London to Canterbury mainline. Dating from after WWI, its tracks and stock were ‘rescued’ from a boat returning from France. It remained in use well into the 1970s when the aging steam loco (Minitrains) was swapped for a strange little diesel (Eggerbahn #4). A heritage society then took over, running trains on summer weekends, although at harvest time it still reverts to Parkwood so that dried hops can be taken to the town.
Paul Spray models South Africa: the shed in the town of Harding. Harding is the end of the two-foot-gauge line which ran inland from Port Shepstone on the Kwazulu-Natal coast (and which is continued into Lesotho by his Lesobeng layout). From Harding, NG16 Garratts and NG15 tender locomotives hauled trains of timber to the coast. The shed allows Paul to show off the NG15 and NG16s so beautifully assembled by Brian Love; Ian Turner provided plans and photos of the prototype shed. Cameos confuse the seasons: on the left, land is being ploughed; in the middle, harvested grain is carried off in sacks by a donkey; and at the right, children dance to a Christmas song.
John Wilkes wanted to build a bridge; as big a bridge as possible on a 900mm x 400mm board. He turned the baseboard upside down and cut away the apron to create a valley for the bridge to go over – the baseboard required strengthening after this surgery. The valley is steep-sided and rocky, carved from expanded polystyrene, and there is a mine with its own small railway system, with basic track and single-blade points. The mainline sliced the mine system in two, hence a a new way of dumping the mine’s waste had to be found.
Simon Elam, recognising that his preferred ‘watch the trains go round’ was not feasible on the small baseboard, elected to try a shunting puzzle based around the classic 'inglenook sidings'. After much fiddling, he pinned down, both metaphorically and physically, a track layout. Attempting to enable remote uncoupling continues to be a challenge, and this has allowed distractions to creep in such as creating additional corner modules enabling us to form a U-shape and turntable modules for end-to-end operation. Simon is still hopeful of finding out what kind of industry the sidings will serve.
Tanworthy Quarry by Roger Tatton, using two 900mm x 400mm baseboards, provides us with a passing loop and so will ideally be positioned roughly equidistant to each end of the layout. The loop is on an upper level, but a separate quarry yard occupies a lower level which takes wagons to and from hidden cassettes at the back of the boards. Tanworthy Quarry has added shunting and DCC options which, with low-profile SEEP motors on the low level and Hattons motors on the high level all operated from a single switchboard, have taken blood and sweat (and the odd tear) to complete. Inspired by the Midlands’ Ironstone industry but also by a recent visit to Portland, the final form might yet be a surprise – even to Roger.
Keith Howard’s much simpler ‘Pit and Pitt’ is situated somewhere on the Cotswold Ridge, with a backscene of wildflowers photographed at the old Edgehill airfield. Begun as an experiment with using cork to model rock faces, it has mutated into the flooded remains of a small Ironstone quarry to one side of a local industrial complex where Bakelite mouldings are still produced (in a warehouse that hides Peco switches). One challenge of our module specification is what to do with space in front of the mainline, and the solution here has been to add a Scenecraft L&B loco shed.
Finally (for the moment, that is; others may yet join us), Barry Witteridge takes on the L&B theme with five modules – his excuse for expanding so far beyond a single 900mm x 400mm board is that he doesn’t have an 009 layout at home! His main module is an imaginary Combe Martin extension, with a platform and run-round loop, plus a loco shed and carriage shed based on those that used to exist at Pilton Yard. The station building is Chelfham, sans viaduct, and Woody Bay has contributed a goods shed and coal store. Perhaps somewhere in one of the windows a pensive Jeremy Thorpe lurks. To one side a low river quay features warehouses, a 26-foot lugger sailing boat and a water mill, and in the other direction the mainline runs through countryside, under a road overbridge and over a cattle creep before coming to Parracombe Halt – complete with the proposed-but-never-laid siding and a ruined cottage.
Members of the 009 Society will be able to read about the progress on the module in the Society magazine, 009 News. So far there are two articles in November 2021 and June 2022.