Somehow, the mojo has been sorely missing over the past month.  I’ve had a rethink about my N-club modules – nothing major – and have been thinking this through.  And life has been a bit busy – too many days reading a good book when I should have been modelling.  I suppose that I have done some more preparation work for the show on the 14th, and also begun to think ahead for the 2019 ‘N Gauge SouthEast’ exhibition.

But I have thought about fiddle yard loops for N-club.  The two sketches below show the ideas.  Using Peco curved points, it’s easy to get four loops on a board 1200mm x 750mm or so.  We’ve avoided minimum radius curves, but have used Peco 2, 3 and 4th radii, and a line outside that curve.  It does mean that you would have to be careful what ran on the inner track, but the outer three should take any locomotive, steam or diesel.

Two of these loops, a left and right hand pair, would form a reasonable fiddle yard for a small N-club set up, allowing an empty running track and six (or more if the trains were short) trains held in the loops at each end.

And if there isn’t room for the full layout at home, one loop could be added to, for example, a Minories style terminus for a compact layout.

Taking this a bit further, making the boards symmetrical rather than the full N-club 400mm width at the end would save weight and make them more flexible in use.  It could be possible to fold the two sides of the loop into the centre, as shown below, making the fiddle yards very transportable.

Food for thought, indeed.  All I need is to actually do something….