Project
Westgate Hollow Yard
A small, fictional OO gauge goods yard, built as a test layout to prove the control system and practise scenic techniques before a full-room layout.
- Status
- active
- Platform
- OO gauge · test layout
What it’s for
Westgate Hollow Yard is deliberately small. It’s a test layout, and it has three jobs:
- Verify the control system. Everything else on this site (the orchestrator, PicoDCC, the feedback nodes and the throttle) gets proven here on real track, with real locos and real sensors, before it has to run anything bigger.
- Try out scenic techniques.
- General practice at baseboards, track, wiring and everything else, ahead of a larger full-room layout in the future.
The reasoning is recorded as a decision: build a small test layout first.
The story
Westgate Hollow Yard is fictional. It isn’t based on any prototype; the village, the yard, its history and the farms below are all invented.
Westgate Hollow Yard serves the village of Hollowgate, in West Yorkshire, in the early British Railways era.
Hollowgate grew around a medieval packhorse route that crossed the valley (“the Hollow”), with the westward track marked by a stone gatehouse. When the branch line was pushed through in the 1890s, the railway couldn’t justify a full station at the village, so a compact goods yard was built just off the main lane and named Westgate Hollow Yard.
By early BR days it handled coal, fertiliser, cattle and seasonal produce from nearby farms, with a small engine shed added to keep the pick-up goods engine and a shunter overnight. As road haulage took over in the 1950s, the yard survived by consolidating traffic for several surrounding villages, and by using its storage sidings for timber and agricultural machinery.
Traffic
- Coal and coke in small wagons
- Fertiliser and lime for the local farms
- Cattle and sheep in market season
- Timber, fencing and occasional machinery
- Seasonal produce in vanfits or opens
The farms it serves
| Farm | Mainly |
|---|---|
| Hollowgate Farm | General mixed farming |
| Brackenhowe Farm | Dairy and cattle |
| Low Fell Farm | Sheep and wool |
| Foxfield Farm | Root crops and produce |
| Moorfield Farm | Hay and fodder |
| Alder Beck Farm | Seasonal vegetables |
| Crowden Farm | Timber and fencing |
Signage
- BR totem: deep blue with white lettering, “WESTGATE HOLLOW YARD” in Gill Sans. Three-line version: HOLLOWGATE above, EST. 1893 below.
- Goods enamel board: white on black, “WESTGATE HOLLOW GOODS YARD”.
- Painted timber board: off-white with black lettering, slightly weathered, “WESTGATE HOLLOW YARD”.
- Shed nameplate: a small cast plate, “WESTGATE HOLLOW SHED”.
Track plan
A two-road fiddle yard feeds a single entry line into the goods yard, which fans out through points into:
| Area | Roads |
|---|---|
| Fiddle yard | Two sidings, each split into a rear and front section |
| Storage sidings | Three |
| Goods shed | One line |
| Engine shed | Two roads |
Hardware on the layout
| Part | Used for |
|---|---|
| Cobalt iP Digital point motors | Commanded over DCC accessory addresses. They can’t report their own position, so it will be read separately from their S2 changeover contacts; the firmware for that is built but the wiring isn’t in yet. See why command and feedback are separate. |
| LM-iD.1 current detectors | Block occupancy today. They’re active low, so a broken wire reads as a clear block. |
| Block detector boards | Home-designed, active-high replacement detectors, so a broken wire reads as occupied. Revision 1.0 is on order. |
| IR reflective sensors | Fitted where a train should stand, such as the goods shed loading bank, so automation can stop on a beam. |
The control system around it is described on the other project pages.
Decisions
- acceptedBuild our own active-high block detector
· Off-the-shelf detectors pull low for occupied, so a broken wire under the layout reads as a clear block. A home-designed board with an active-high output makes that fault read as occupied instead.
- acceptedThe block detectors' Input A is left unpowered, against the datasheet
· Powering an LM-iD.1's Input A, as every datasheet says to, makes its output idle at 5V into 3.3V expander inputs. It's deliberately left unpowered on Westgate Hollow.
- acceptedPoints are commanded by one device and read back by another
· Cobalt iP point motors take DCC commands but can't report their position, so position comes from their S2 contacts on a feedback node. That catches hand-thrown points, but creates two mappings nothing cross-checks.
- acceptedBuild a small test layout before a full-room layout
· Westgate Hollow Yard is a deliberately small OO gauge goods yard for proving the control system and practising, ahead of a larger full-room layout.
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