Meeting  6th March 2019

Modelling Swiss Railways – Talk and Layout Operation by David Gofliffe

David Gotliffe very kindly and with very little notice stepped in and gave a talk and layout demonstration on Swiss Railways when our scheduled speaker was unable to attend through illness.

He started with a description of the development of railways in Switzerland, having first of all outlined how his interest in railways developed following his upbringing in Cardiff. This was in the mid 60’s when steam was being replaced by diesel traction. He had at that time a greater interest in the contemporary Western hydraulics rather than the old steam locos which operated at that time on the Cardiff to Paddington main line. Following a number of relocations, membership of model railway clubs and meeting other modellers primarily interested in continental railways, David developed his passion for such contemporary railways and took an interest in Swiss Railways.

As an introduction to the operation and demonstration of his layout David gave a brief history of the development of railways in Switzerland which he illustrated with maps and copies of the publication Swiss Railways. Interestingly the majority of Swiss Railways are narrow gauge lines operated by private companies with the standard gauge operated by SBB being a far smaller element of the overall track mileage.

David then referred to his current Z gauge layout named Kyburg  which he had brought along to the meeting. Track and rolling stock was primarily from Marklin. Z gauge operates at 1/220 scale on 6.5mm track which is approximately two thirds the size of N gauge.

His layout operated flawlessly and looked superb; the scenic items and the buildings with full internal lighting were particularly effective especially in a darkened scene with the room lights turned off and were a fulsome tribute to David’s skills as a first class modeller.

Sam Ryan has taken some action photographs of the evening’s event which do much more to illustrate the quality of David’s layout  and which are attached.

Again many thanks to David for filling in with a top class presentation on what would have been a gap in our programme of events.

David Evans

March 2019