Rather than build a layout from rare and exotic items, everything on Pottendorf is readily available, either by mail-order or from a good hobby store. This ensures that anyone can build a similar layout.

After over thirty years exhibiting, I had to call a halt when my knees finally collapsed but after their replacement with titanium a year ago, I decided to spend my forthcoming retirement exhibiting. My retirement gift was a set of plywood baseboards and in Feb 2016, a start was made.

The plywood boards are both light and robust, the overall size to just 3,4m x 0.6m. The layout was designed for one person operation with all control by handheld Roco DCC and the off- scene storage uses cassettes. Track is Peco 75, and rather than expensive imports, all buffer stops are modified Peco.

The trackplan is cribbed from Ebern Ofr in its original form as an endstation with locoshed and uses just four turnouts, one of which is a three-way.

All the buildings, with one exception are very old Pola kits, only the barn is a recent product from Martin at Mullers Bruchboden. Rather than chose 'somewhere in Germany' all structures were carefully selected to suit the supposed location in Oberfranken. The station building is very similar to Redwitz an der Rodach, the locoshed is a gently modified version of the long lost structure at Ebern, whilst all the other supporting structures can be found with 25kms of each other in Franconia. Of particular interest is the half timbered barn, the original is just outside Forcheim.

Mindful of the region of Fränkische Schweiz, some distinctive limestone outcrops help to hide the exit whilst also defining the area. The overall dusty appearance of the road surfaces and sun bleached vegetation would be familiar to anyone who knows the area, the vegetation is a mix of hanging basket liner which has been multi-layered with various static grasses from Heki and WSS Scenics.

A tight grip on the wallet has restricted the rolling stock to items which actually ran on the Wiesenttalbahn apart from the Pt2/3 which is used for excursion trains from Nurnberg. Therefore just a couple of locos and a few suitable lokalbahnwagens from Trix and Fleischmann.

Weathering to stock is careful washes of heavily diluted Lifecolour sleeper colour whilst the buildings have received a fine layer of very pale yellowish dust, typical of a very dry August.

Tim Hale

Pottendorf is a small branch terminus station in Oberfranken at the end of a long hot summer in the 1950’s. Old operating practices remain in place, with passenger services either in the hands of a railbus or larger loco hauled trains that feed direct from the branch to either Nuremberg or Wützburg. The branch line still retains a number of sources of goods traffic that mean that freight services remain in operation and hopefully local industries will allow the line to survive the cuts that will soon hit many other rural branch lines.

Originally built by Tim Hale, the layout is of simple construction, with DCC operation, that shows that a realistic railway can be built in a small space and allows interesting operations!