Kyle of Lochinsh was the layout of Simon Newitt, a member of OMRC. Kyle of Lochinsh is a fictitious layout set on the wild and rugged north west coast of Scotland. Established in 1788 by the British Fishery Society as a herring port Lochinsh is 35 miles north west of Inverness. Nestling at the foot of high mountains and on the shore of the deep fjord like Kyle of Lochinsh it is a remote and beautiful location.
The line was opened in 1902 but crossing largely uninhabited terrain means that traffic has always been sparse. The decline of the fishing industry and growth of road transport has seen freight traffic shrink and what goods trains there are left consist mainly of supplies for the village and engineers trains. Some fish still leaves by rail but the bulk now goes by road. A small oil terminal serves the village and surrounding areas and provides fuel for the fishing fleets at Kyle of Lochinsh and Lochinver, further up the coast. Dr Beeching has long gone but his axe still hangs over the line.
A saving grace for the line has been the building of a North Sea Oil Construction Terminal down the loch from the village. Because of the poor roads and remote location materials for the terminal all come by rail and block trains of both cement trains from the south, and oil pipes from Invergordon can frequently be seen in the station swapping the train engine for the station pilot. A class 20 locomotive which will take them on the last 3 miles of their journey.
Kyle of Lochinsh is also home to the last working steam engine in Scotland. A Hunslet Austerity tank engine called "Caithness" owned and operated by the Lochinsh Distillery. Regular trip workings of barley hoppers arrive from the maltings at Muir of Ord and are taken 2 miles back up the line to the distillery by the company's own locomotive. Finished whisky leaves for the south by rail, usually in bulk tankers, but occasionally there is a trip working to the Clynelish Distillery at Brora using an ex GWR milk tanker and casks and hogsheads carried in open wagons.
The layout is set in the era Simon grew up in, the BR Blue Diesel Era, and can be run in two time periods, 1975-1981 and 1982-1984. For exhibitions the layout is normally operated in the 1975-1981 period as this affords a greater variety of trains and locomotives.
All the locomotives on the layout are ready to run Lima, Bachmann, Hornby and Heljan products. All have been stripped, re-sprayed and re-numbered and are models of actual locomotives that were based at Inverness, Edinburgh Haymarket and Glasgow Eastfield depots, and would have worked over this line had it been built. All the Lima locomotives have been re-motored, the Class 37's and 40's being fitted to Bachmann chassis and the 20, 26's and 27 being fitted with Mashima Can Motors, flywheels and finescale wheels. Two Hornby Class 25 bodies have been fitted to Bachmann chassis. All the Lima and Hornby locomotives have been fitted with flushglazing.
Freight stock is a mixture of ready to run and kit built, with some being heavily modified. All have been re-sprayed and re-numbered. Coaches are all standard Bachmann. Too many very good exhibition layouts are spoilt by being too clean and too tidy. The British Railways I remember from my childhood was dirty, rundown and scruffy, money was tight and morale was low. This layout attempts to convey that dirty rundown atmosphere.
