Steve will be with us on the Saturday only this year.
The layout is meant to represent a railhead that contains a small mine loading pocket owned by the Duncan’s Mine Corporation and is set in 1959. It is located in Chippewa County of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, USA, where mining has been a significant industry and copper, iron and coal have all been extracted over the years. The branch is off the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railroad’s main line between Sault Ste. Marie and Duluth. The layout portrays the transport of an (unspecified) ore from the mine itself, which is handily located just off the board, to the outside world. Incoming traffic is in the form of mining equipment for the DMC, plus supplies and fuel for the local township of Pontiac Flats. There is also timber traffic being despatched to a paper mill back down the line. The DSS&A run the branch that accesses the railhead and its locos, plus those from other local roads, move the cars in and out, whilst DMC-owned locos shift the cars around the site. As was often the case, the DMC bought second hand locos when it could afford them. However, at present they have an Alco S2 demonstrator on loan to assess for possible purchase. The structures on the layout come from various sources including Walthers and Knightwing, plus some scratchbuilt items. Locos are from Roundhouse, Bachmann, Atlas and the Proto range. Freight cars are from the regular US manufacturers. Track is Micro Engineering code 70. For those of you thinking you have seen the layout before, there was an an earlier incarnation, called, imaginatively, Duncan’s Mine 1. The layout was featured in the March 2018 edition of Continental Modeller The operators are happy to answer any questions you might wish to ask.