Only one town is modelled, provisionally called Pukerua. It is roughly where Pukerua Bay is: on a hill over the water on the west coast north of Wellington.

The mainline goes north and south, curving round to the double ended staging yard, hidden below and behind building “flats”. This allows continuous running when we just want to let ‘em rip e.g. visitors, open days.

The staging tracks are set up from a fiddle yard with vertical shelving storage and cassettes for handling made-up trains.

Turnouts for the staging yard (and mainline?) are controlled by slow-motion machines with DCC controllers with manual pushbutton controls on panels. Al others are controlled manually by groundthrows or panel knobs.

The town of Pukerua has a passing siding (or “loop” in Yank parlance), yard, steam engine service facilities, the freezing works, and a few other clients in an urban switching area. The passing siding also has an interchange track where freight cars are dropped by passing trains for the SPL branch line to the Wairarapa (this branch line splits from the mainline “off scene” somewhere north).

The yard has
• Three classification tracks
• A runaround clear of the main and passing siding
• a MOW track
• a RIP track
• It also includes two industries: a team track, a depot and the freezing works stockyards
It doesn’t have a caboose track, passenger car facilities, washing facilities…

Engine servicing has
• Inbound and outbound tracks (outbound doubles as DCC programming track)
• Ash pit, wash pit, coal, sand and water
• Several parking tracks
• 3 stall roundhouse with inspection and repair

The urban switching area supports
• Freezing works inbound deliveries and outbound goods
• Fuel and chemicals store
• Two or three other industries
Curves are VERY sharp to get between buildings. We will have to be careful laying track, and the area will be restricted to a few small switcher locos, possibly using idler cars