Blea Moor signal box stands just below the summit of the Settle and Carlisle Railway. The climb from Settle Junction lasts almost 17 miles at 1 in 100 before the line eases and sweeps across the hillside. Two passing loops sit in front of the box. There is no road within two miles. A pair of railway cottages. One detached house. Two water towers. A few huts that cling on in spite of the weather. The railway looks small against the Pennine slopes and that is precisely what makes it compelling.
This is the location that Peter Kirmond set out to recreate as a serious exhibition layout that could also be erected and operated at home in Gloucestershire. His OO gauge model railway Blea Moor presents late BR steam in one of the most remote places on the network. Freights wait in the loops while expresses rush through, exactly as the real Settle and Carlisle intended. Photographers once made the long walk from Ribblehead in search of a single image and were often rewarded with hail from a clear sky. The emptiness is not background. It is the story.
Origins and Concept
The route to Blea Moor began a long way from Yorkshire. A move from Leeds to rural Gloucestershire placed Peter and his wife above a double garage roughly 19ft by 17ft. Filling it with cars would have been an insult to the potential. At last there was space to build the main-line layout that had lived in his imagination without compromise.
The first candidate was Aylesbury Joint Station in ScaleSeven. Three railway companies. Proper main-line passenger work. Goods traffic in abundance. Some locomotives already underway. On paper it was perfect. On the floor it collapsed. Minimum 6ft radius curves demanded in 7mm scale consumed the entire garage and still refused to look comfortable. Domestic storage still needed a home. A realistic estimate for scratchbuilding all necessary Great Central and Metropolitan stock pointed to more than a decade of work. The layout was beginning to feel like a sentence rather than a pleasure.
The moment of truth arrived on New Year’s Eve 1999. Peter sat alone in the empty garage with a 3D mock-up of the Aylesbury plan and a bottle of claret. On that cold concrete floor the excitement he had hoped to feel was missing. He needed to rethink before the project failed before it began.
So he wrote down what actually mattered:
- A convincing feeling of space
- Sweeping main-line curves
- A real location that rewards accurate modelling
- Half the garage still usable at home
- A layout operable alone at home or by two at exhibitions
- First show within three or four years
ScaleSeven fell at the first hurdle. The scale would change. The ambition would not.
Peter next examined Scalefour. S4 curves need around a 4ft minimum radius for main-line stock. That pushed the return curves too wide and cut the scenic frontage down to around 16–17ft. Using his own proportional rule that the visible length should be at least two and a half times the longest train, S4 would only allow six-coach expresses. They looked short and the layout looked smaller than the trains on it. Longer turnouts also reduced fiddle yard capacity and building S4 stock takes longer because of springing. S4 had to go.
EM was considered and admired for its better appearance, but Peter wanted to get trains running and keep the energy high. He already had friends with suitable OO steam-era stock who could run on the layout immediately. The new generation of Bachmann RTR models meant high-quality main-line engines straight out of the box. They could always be detailed later.
There was a small compromise in adopting OO. The track gauge would represent 4ft 1½in rather than 4ft 8½in. Everything else could be built to the highest standard. For a solo main-line project that needed to be achievable, OO was the right call.
Peter has a firm belief that modelling real places produces more convincing results. On the prototype everything is where it is for a reason. A location like Blea Moor forces honesty. It cannot be dressed up. You either capture the character or you miss the point entirely.
With the scale fixed, Peter returned to a long-standing interest in the Settle and Carlisle. He had admired David Jenkinson’s Garsdale Road since seeing it many years earlier. Plotting a diagonal scenic sweep across the garage unlocked a 16ft radius front curve with tight but acceptable return curves hidden behind a Pennine hillside. The space now looked like paralleled main lines.
Ribblehead Viaduct was the obvious show-stopper but operationally limited. Blea Moor had everything required. Freight regulation. Expresses at speed. A handful of buildings that are there to get the job done. Trains that look small in the landscape. A name that says exactly what the place is.
Choosing Blea Moor was not romantic sentiment. It was practical and entirely right.
Design and Construction
Once the 16ft radius scenic curve was proven to fit comfortably across the diagonal of the garage, the next question was whether the layout could sustain the kind of continuous main-line operation Peter wanted. He had seen enough main-line layouts where the first train appeared, then everything went quiet while someone in the fiddle yard shuffled stock like parcels on a sorting bench. That was not the intention here.
Peter wanted freight trains climbing the last yards to the summit of the Long Drag at little more than walking pace. He also wanted the Thames–Clyde Express to burst through at 80mph down the gradient. In short, he wanted the movement and drama that define the Settle and Carlisle. That meant a regular procession of trains in both directions and the ability to run the layout fully solo at home.
Stock Requirements and Storage
The starting point was deciding how many trains were needed to portray late 1950s and early 1960s traffic with conviction. Photographs showed a broad mixture of passenger and freight workings. David Jenkinson’s Little Long Drag project pointed to around 24 trains being the minimum to show the variation in Settle and Carlisle traffic in the 1930s. The Stoke Summit team on the East Coast Main Line run nearly 40. Both convinced Peter that a sequence of 30 to 40 movements allows a satisfying run before anything repeats.
At an exhibition it is not enough to be realistic. The audience wants the excitement without the gaps. A train every 30 to 60 seconds gives the right rhythm. The thrill of seeing a signal pulled off. The anticipation. The train. None of the long waits that are authentic to the real railway but death to a public display.
Two practical problems appeared immediately:
• Thirty trains is a huge amount of stock for one person
• Where on earth would they all live between appearances
Peter considered cassettes and traversers but only a full fiddle yard with points would deliver the operational flexibility needed. Hours with CAD led to the limits. To maintain train length in the main yard at around 8 to 9 corridor coaches or 30 wagons, the most he could physically store was 14 trains. That was short of the target and it created too much repetition.
How to Double the Sequence Without Doubling the Stock
The key breakthrough came when Peter realised that if each train could appear from both directions, the effective sequence would double. Twenty trains could yield a cycle of around 40 movements before the same working reappeared in the same direction. That solved the repetition problem without requiring additional stock.
The most elegant solution was a folded figure of eight. The entire layout became a single long circuit with two hidden yards and two passes across the visible scene. It was not a new idea. John Allison’s N gauge layouts in Railway Modeller had explored similar concepts decades earlier. The trick was making it reliable.
The first folded design relied on flat crossings where the circuits intersected. These were collision traps. They had to go. Peter rebuilt the design with diveunders and overbridges so trains could cross without conflict and keep flowing.
Queueing and Automation
Even with flyovers, the distances between the fiddle yards and the scenic section were long. A train disappearing offstage could take too long to reappear, creating gaps controlled by the layout rather than the operator. The solution was queueing. Each offstage approach could hold three trains nose-to-tail.
The idea was simple:
• One train is out front working
• One is waiting just out of sight to follow
• One is behind that, ready to move up
Peter invented a dead-section queueing system triggered by magnets under brake vans and reed switches in the track. Every time a magnet passed, the dead section immediately behind was re-energised and the next dead section further back was switched off. The trains leapfrogged up the queue automatically. Latching relays retained the settings.
Up to eight trains can move at once. The layout operator still controls the scenic section directly and a panic button kills power to all hidden track if needed.
The final arrangement provides:
• 14 trains in the fiddle yards
• 2 in each queue
• 18 trains visible to the operating system
• A sequence of around 40 movements before repetition
This delivers exactly what was intended. A Settle and Carlisle layout that feels busy without looking false.
Design and Construction
Once the 16ft radius scenic curve was proven to fit comfortably across the diagonal of the garage, the next question was whether the layout could sustain the kind of continuous main-line operation Peter wanted. He had seen enough main-line layouts where the first train appeared, then everything went quiet while someone in the fiddle yard shuffled stock like parcels on a sorting bench. That was not the intention here.
Peter wanted freight trains climbing the last yards to the summit of the Long Drag at little more than walking pace. He also wanted the Thames–Clyde Express to burst through at 80mph down the gradient. In short, he wanted the movement and drama that define the Settle and Carlisle. That meant a regular procession of trains in both directions and the ability to run the layout fully solo at home.
Stock Requirements and Storage
The starting point was deciding how many trains were needed to portray late 1950s and early 1960s traffic with conviction. Photographs showed a broad mixture of passenger and freight workings. David Jenkinson’s Little Long Drag project pointed to around 24 trains being the minimum to show the variation in Settle and Carlisle traffic in the 1930s. The Stoke Summit team on the East Coast Main Line run nearly 40. Both convinced Peter that a sequence of 30 to 40 movements allows a satisfying run before anything repeats.
At an exhibition it is not enough to be realistic. The audience wants the excitement without the gaps. A train every 30 to 60 seconds gives the right rhythm. The thrill of seeing a signal pulled off. The anticipation. The train. None of the long waits that are authentic to the real railway but death to a public display.
Two practical problems appeared immediately:
- Thirty trains is a huge amount of stock for one person
- Where on earth would they all live between appearances
Peter considered cassettes and traversers but only a full fiddle yard with points would deliver the operational flexibility needed. Hours with CAD led to the limits. To maintain train length in the main yard at around 8 to 9 corridor coaches or 30 wagons, the most he could physically store was 14 trains. That was short of the target and it created too much repetition.
How to Double the Sequence Without Doubling the Stock
The key breakthrough came when Peter realised that if each train could appear from both directions, the effective sequence would double. Twenty trains could yield a cycle of around 40 movements before the same working reappeared in the same direction. That solved the repetition problem without requiring additional stock.
The most elegant solution was a folded figure of eight. The entire layout became a single long circuit with two hidden yards and two passes across the visible scene. It was not a new idea. John Allison’s N gauge “Watching the Trains Go By” layout in Railway Modeller had explored similar concepts decades earlier. The trick was making it reliable.
The first folded design relied on flat crossings where the circuits intersected. These were collision traps. They had to go. Peter rebuilt the design with diveunders and overbridges so trains could cross without conflict and keep flowing.
Queueing and Automation
Even with flyovers, the distances between the fiddle yards and the scenic section were long. A train disappearing offstage could take too long to reappear, creating gaps controlled by the layout rather than the operator. The solution was queueing. Each offstage approach could hold three trains nose-to-tail.
The idea was simple:
- One train is out front working
- One is waiting just out of sight to follow
- One is behind that, ready to move up
Peter invented a dead-section queueing system triggered by magnets under brake vans and reed switches in the track. Every time a magnet passed, the dead section immediately behind was re-energised and the next dead section further back was switched off. The trains leapfrogged up the queue automatically. Latching relays retained the settings.
Up to eight trains can move at once. The layout operator still controls the scenic section directly and a panic button kills power to all hidden track if needed.
The final arrangement provides:
- 14 trains in the fiddle yards
- 2 in each queue
- 18 trains visible to the operating system
- A sequence of around 40 movements before repetition
This delivers exactly what was intended. A Settle and Carlisle layout that feels busy without looking false.
Track and Control
The scenic section of Blea Moor follows the prototype’s relentless climb towards the summit of the Long Drag. The real gradient is 1 in 100 but Peter eased this slightly to around 1 in 84 to give the hidden tracks enough headroom to pass beneath the hillside. Offstage, the gradients steepen to roughly 1 in 60 to provide the vertical separation needed for the flyovers that replace flat crossings in the folded figure-of-eight design.
The scenic frontage sits on a curve of about 16ft radius. This gives the trains a genuinely main-line stance and allows a realistic degree of superelevation. The return curves are tighter at about 2ft 6in radius, hidden entirely from view. The climb is continuous from one end of the layout to the other. Locomotives do real work here and they look like they are doing it.
Each fiddle yard represents one direction. Originally there were six lanes per yard, arranged as four long and two short roads, capable of holding a total of 20 trains. In the final design the emphasis changed to reliability and operational flexibility, giving fourteen fiddle yard lanes plus four queueing blocks.
The folded figure-of-eight circuit solves the repetition problem. Every train can appear from both directions which effectively doubles the sequence length without requiring more stock. The flyovers eliminate the risk of collisions that plagued the first design. Only one crossover remains flat at the exit from the fiddle yards and that is protected electrically so nothing happens without the operator’s consent.
Peter wanted smooth, continuous operation whether the layout was staffed by two operators at an exhibition or just himself at home. That meant automation in the hidden sections. If he had to spend all his time shuffling trains in the fiddle yard, the layout would fail its purpose.
The solution is one of the most sophisticated hidden control systems seen on a British exhibition layout. The offstage track is divided into a series of dead sections separated by reed switches. A magnet under every brake van triggers the switch as the train passes, energising the section behind and de-energising the one a train’s length further back. Latching relays hold the condition until the next magnet arrives. It creates a constantly adjusting queue. One train on stage, one poised to enter, several more moving up behind it.
This automatic traffic management keeps trains flowing without intervention. The operator remains in charge of the scenic part using a push-to-make switch for each entry block. A green LED shows the line is clear. A red LED shows there is still a train occupying the block. A panic button cuts power to all hidden roads if anything misbehaves. Each dead section is longer than the wheelbase of any locomotive so nothing can accidentally bridge the gap and override the system.
Up to eight trains can be in motion at any one time. Four Modellex controllers power the hidden sections so no more than two trains draw current from any controller at a time. The latching relay boards are built by Heathcote Electronics. They are solidly made and reliable, and only marginally more expensive than sourcing the parts individually. Peter has described the resulting wiring inside the fiddle yard panel as a reasonably tidy mass.
It works. It works well. And the trains keep coming.
Scenery and Structures
The scenic design of Blea Moor is driven by the landscape rather than the railway. The Settle and Carlisle is a main line imposed on hostile terrain and the model acknowledges that truth from the outset.
The hillside rises steeply above the tracks, both to reflect the Pennine topography and to hide the complex hidden trackage beneath. The scenic landform does real engineering work here. The gradient up the hill provides the necessary vertical separation for the diveunders and overbridges that make the folded figure-of-eight design practical. There is no arbitrary scenic bump. Everything is where it is because the layout’s geometry required it.
The railway buildings are few and purposeful. The focal point is Blea Moor signal box. It clocks the flow of traffic and provides human presence in a location that otherwise looks indifferent to civilisation. The cottages and detached house sit slightly back from the line, as they do on the prototype, with the two water towers giving vertical punctuation and reminding us of the era when steam engines could not stray far without water. These structures anchor the scene visually and tell the viewer this is the real railway, not a theatrical model.
Peter had a particular advantage in modelling the terrain. One of his close friends is a professional geologist whose speciality is the Pennine limestone. He produced a panoramic sketch of the moor, identifying the landforms and explaining how they could be represented in three dimensions in timber, foam and plaster. The result is not a generic hill. It is Blea Moor.
The colour palette is subdued. It had to be. The Settle and Carlisle does not reward cheerful scenic treatment. Greens are cut with grey. Grass is not lush unless it sits where water collects. Stonework is cold. The occasional heather tuft gives texture but not decoration. The whole scene points towards the horizon and the next train.
The scenic work maintains a consistent viewing height and depth. Nothing towers artificially above the trains. Nothing distracts from the sweep of the main line. The real drama here comes from the trains working hard against the landscape. The scenery provides context and honesty rather than spectacle for its own sake.
On this railway the sheep are not picturesque. They are simply residents who have been here longer than everything else.
Locomotives and Rolling Stock
Peter chose the late British Railways steam period because it allowed a compelling mixture of motive power and traffic without straying into the diesel era too heavily. The Settle and Carlisle in the late 1950s and early 1960s saw a constant parade of fitted freights, heavy mineral workings, express passenger services and occasional oddities that reward close research.
Expresses typically run in eight or nine Mk1 corridor coaches with a Jubilee or a Black Five up front. The scenic length is calculated precisely to make these formations look comfortable rather than overdressed. The rule is simple. The longest train should appear no more than two fifths of the visible length. A longer train looks like it has nowhere to go. A shorter one looks apologetic. Here, eight or nine coaches plus a large passenger engine delivers the right presence and movement.
Freight variety is substantial. Anhydrite trains from Long Meg were regular heavy workings in the period. A typical train photographed on 4 August 1966 features bogie bolster wagons, which Bachmann has produced in ready-to-run form of satisfying quality. Presflo wagons were common too. The Dapol Presflo kit makes a realistic fitted cement or chemical working without much pain. Mixed fitted freight is a staple of day-to-day operation. Recent RTR releases mean that realistic wagon rakes can be formed in an evening rather than a year.
Mineral traffic sits more in the background but is represented accurately where it appears in reference photographs. The moor does not need trains of every kind all the time. It needs the right trains at the right moment.
Locomotives are an honest mix of kit-built and refined RTR. Peter was not going to waste a decade hand-building locos when Bachmann already produce Black Fives that run faultlessly straight out of the box. They can be detailed once the railway is working. For a layout designed to sustain eight trains moving at once, reliability comes first. RTR mechanisms give him that. They also give him company. Running rights from friends with good OO steam stock keep operations lively from day one.
Expresses appear in multiple liveries. There is no attempt to enforce an artificial uniformity because the real railway never did. It keeps the scene visually interesting without straying into contrivance. Freight brake vans carry magnets under their floors to trigger the automation. It is a detail the audience will never see but without which the layout would stop dead.
Direction matters. Some workings appear in both directions for exhibition rhythm. Others have authenticity limits. A northbound anhydrite working might return empty southbound but the change must be subtle. The presence of engine changes behind the scenes helps mask repetition. A Jubilee emerging where a Black Five last appeared makes the sequence feel larger than it is.
One of the most satisfying sights on Blea Moor is a heavy freight cresting the incline, regulator open, exhaust digging into the sky. The Automatic queuing system ensures there is always another working breathing down its neck.
–
Exhibtions
- Railex 2009 – last show
More Information
- Kirmond, Peter. “Blea Moor: Options.” Model Railway Journal, no. 143, 2003.
- Kirmond, Peter. “Blea Moor: Decisions.” Model Railway Journal, no. 145, 2003.
- Kirmond, Peter. “Blea Moor: Construction.” Model Railway Journal, no. 148, 2004.
- Kirmond, Peter. “Blea Moor: The Hill.” Model Railway Journal, no. 151, 2005.
- Kirmond, Peter. “Blea Moor: The Final Curtain.” Model Railway Journal, no. 194, 2009.