Nob's Crook is almost certainly worth a few penalty points on our artistic licenses... A casual glance will give the impression of a mid-50s Western region branch serving a small village on the outskirts of a larger industrial town.
There is a small station (complete with pub!), and a few sidings and facilities for handling local goods, also serving the industrial estate.
However, the layout is riddled with anachronisms and anomalies � all intentional, of course, and referring mainly to our other interests and hobbies.
The layout itself has quite a patchwork history. The boards were salvaged from the ill-fated OO gauge junior layout, while several of the buildings are remnants of the previous (abandoned) N gauge set.
Our first intention had been to build a German layout, but due to the fact that we were all poor students (among other factors!) we changed the plan to be a British country station.
After several disasters, many extensive modifications (i.e. completely re-laying the track) and Aubrey disappearing to join the British Army, we eventually found a design that a) we liked and b) worked... until the 2006 exhibition, where we discovered the limitations of what was basically a single-track layout. Consequently, the last few months have been spent converting the layout to double track � and dealing with the inevitable electrical problems which seem to crop up everywhere! But recent tests have show that we now have a pretty much fully functional layout, on which we can run two trains simultaneously and yet independently.
Nob's Crook was designed and built by Rob Gatward, Jim Huckle and Aubrey Seymour of the Newbury Model Railway Club.