Sandy Lane is a fictitious line, located in the home countries and set in the early 1950’s soon after nationalisation. Its design is influenced by two other narrow gauge lines, Leighton Buzzard and Snailbeach. Neither had a passenger service but were used to transport minerals from a quarry or mine, to where their cargo was off loaded for onward transportation. The use of Hudson side tipper wagons were regularly seen on narrow gauge lines and their design allowed for easy transfer of their load to standard gauge wagons. The layout reflects this, with 09 gauge tipper wagons being filled with gravel, which are then shunted to the standard gauge line where they are then tipped into a waiting wagon. The layout is made up of two baseboards, each 44 inches long and 20 inches wide. To add to the visual interest, a high level 09 line is included and this runs from a mine entrance, over two bridges and into the factory. This line is controlled through a shuttle unit, so a loco and a couple of wagons continually travel slowly “to and fro”, while other operations are carried out on the lower levels.
