Set in the late 1950s/early 1960s, St Oswalds depicts a run down Welsh narrow-gauge railway goods yard in its last days before closure. The layout and its stock have a Welshpool and Llanfair flavour though also featuring locomotives and wagons from other railways.
St Oswalds is built to 7mm scale and uses Peco O16.5mm gauge track. The points are operated by Tortoise point motors.
The layout is designed as an inglenook shunting puzzle where the operator uses one engine to shunt a train of 8 wagons into an order determined by picking cards from a pack. While 8 wagons may sound modest, it equates to 6,720 different possible permutations. The trackplan consists of two points and three sidings where the longest siding holds 5 wagons, and the other two sidings each hold 3 wagons. The headshunt allows for the engine plus 3 wagons.
The stock has been fitted with Kadee couplings to allow for hand free shunting. The couplings are operated by magnets beneath the track. The magnets can be raised and lowered using a servo to avoid unintentional activation of the couplers.
The locomotives are DCC controlled, and most have been fitted with stay-alive units.
