KMRC Skrifa - Staff layouts#6 – Bryn Y Brenin Mawr  – 00 & 009 Gauges

Within our team at KMRC as well as simply selling model railways we pride ourselves on being able to offer practical advice for our customers in our branches as many of the team are experienced railway modellers in a wide range of gauges, eras and control systems.

This is the sixth of a series of Skrifa posts to highlight some of the layouts built by our team members. 

Simon Paley can be found, occassionally on Saturdays, at our Guildford branch, and or on some of our exhibition stands, he is also Senior Designer (Signalling) for Network Rail. His excellent book Colour Light Signalling for Model Railways can be obtained here>>>

Bryn Y Brenin Mawr (pronounced brin-e-brenin-mow-er) is a ‘home only’ layout and is not intended for exhibitions, despite already appearing at 2 shows! It is intended to portray a small terminus in a town to the west of Yr Wyddfa (err-wid-ver, Mount Snowdon) which serves both standard gauge lines and a narrow-gauge tourist line.


The main intention of the layout was to create something that could entertain at home as well as to combine standard (OO) and narrow gauge (OO9) modelling in a ‘modern’ way as this combination is quite rare.

The standard gauge line represents a small single platform terminus with run around loop at the convergent end of two single lines, one from Caernarfon (car-nar-von) and one from Pwllheli (porf-welly). The line is modelled on the current configuration of the ‘Cambrian Line’, including it’s E.T.C.S. (European Train Control System) signalling system.

The narrow gauge line represents the fictitious Cwellyn (quef-flyn) Lake Railway (CLR) that runs from Bryn Y Brenin Mawr to the lake at Rhyd Ddu (rid-thee). This has two unusual features: a turntable and semaphore signalling.

The layout uses a MERG DCC system, with the standard gauge line controlled using a working E.T.C.S. system via a Raspberry Pi. Those who know about Simon’s exhibition layout ‘Collingwood’ will not be surprised to hear this!

Future plans are to expand the layout further to make it more of a ‘system’ layout that shows the full length of the narrow gauge line as well as more of the standard gauge line.

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