SAINT LAURENT EN ARDENNES

St.Laurent was originally constructed several years ago by Bill Roberts.

Briefly, it portrays a double track main line running through typical Belgium Ardennes scenery on the Luxembourg-Leige main line. Much of the traffic is freight, including scrap steel destined for the steelworks in Bettembourg on the south west of Luxenbourg and finished steel in the other direction.

Small, isolated villages are scattered along the line and have been provided with large imposing stations built to standard railway company design. The fictitious "St.Laurent" is based is one such village and the layout attempts to portray the character of the area (being in the "Battle of the Bulge" area from WWII there is a typical leftover Sherman Tank mounted on a plinth by the level crossing).

St. Laurent appeared in the August 2002 edition of the Continental Modeller.

After some time on the exhibition circuit (the last outing being Cologne) Bill decided towards the end of 2005 that, rather than give the layout a makeover he would dismantle it & use the recovered parts for his next project. Saint Laurent has always been a favourite of both Brian & Dave so, after some negotiation Saint Laurent was moved to its new base at Margate, being re-assembled over Christmas 2005.

The layout has been left basically "as is" with the addition of some operating accessories & a degree of automation (the storage yards are automatic) to enable the layout to be operated by one person & still have plenty of movement. The control system is now DCC. The controllers are Fleischmann Twin-Centres. Decoders are mostly from Lenz & ESU. Control for points is conventional using slow action motors on the visible sections.The operating period is flexible with trains from many periods, although the train formations are accurate (with a little modellers "licence") and the occasion "diverted stray". Locomotives and rolling stock are from a variety of manufactures.

Very popular with the public is the Faller Roadway Vehicles. At present only one vehicle at a time can be operated - we had a lot of problems getting reliable operation with the level crossing, the next stage will be to enable two or three vehicles to run together with the bus stopping at the station bus top.

The layout is 16' x 8' and was sold in January 2013 to a private collector for home use.