“Much Muddling at Supertrain 2019

“As-Yet-Un-Named” at Supertrain 2023

” Much Muddling” has been around for almost 20 years in some form or another invarious member’s basements, and finally in a friend’s barn/shed, growing and developing, getting better and bigger and more complex. It’s a 30′ x 14′ loop layout with over 23 boards and a 14′ extension off one end. It has two mainline and a branchline, an extensive town scene, harbour, beach, and multiple replaceable front scene boards that include a farm, airfield and river. The town scene includes a large market, many row houses, shops, a large church, and space for interchangeable cricket pitch, football pitch, or bowling/tennis greens.

We lost our ‘home’ in 2019, and it went into a ‘seacan’ storage container (with many thanks to the generosity of Iron Horse Park in Airdrie). We don’t have a ‘home’ to set it up in, wasn’t in operating condition when moved, and has deteriorated more during ‘ storage. As it’s rather difficult to work on the wiring and landscaping on one board at a time nothing could be done to restore it. An original member currently currently has it in his garage, in semi-retirement (like a lot of us), but there are hopes that it might eventually get running again.

When Much Muddling went into Storage (at the same time as ‘the lurgy’ we realized that we needed something to show at Supertrain. We had 4 old unused 2′ x 4′ plywood boards, and one member had 12′ of viaduct and station that used to add on to Much Muddling. From this we put together a single line branchline, from a quarry on one end, through a small station, a hamlet, and on to the terminus station. The Branchline never received a name, but has served us for a couple of years, showing at Supertrain and Heritage Park’s Railway Days.

Keeping trains in motion on an end-to-end layout is hard to coordinate at the best of times, and at an exhibition it’s keeping trains running that keeps visitors interested and talking with us. Also there is occasional time consuming switch to DC operation for members with older stock. This brings the inability to run more than one train at a time on a single line.

The club decided late 2023 that Much Muddling would take too much work to restore, and was also really too heavy & complex for a travelling layout. It was decided that we would design and built a new multiple line OO scale layout with lighter boards and much simplified wiring. The ‘Branchline’ is tentatively retired, )as of fall 2024), as our new layout gets put together with the aim of having trains running for Supertrain 2025.