Here on the Elmleigh Light Railway, we’ve had a quiet few months. Services were quite few and far between over the summer for various reasons.

I’d seen on the G Scale Mad forum various discussions concerning Colour Light Signals and amongst those mentioned were those by Mike Cullen of T&M Models. These seemed to be very bright, robustly made but needed to be controlled manually.

My railway’s main running line is single track with a reverse loop at each end. I use a Gaugemaster 2.5a controller and control the loops automatically using the EPL system that features in the ‘World of LGB’ book. We can have two trains running and each one starts the other running as it comes into the station.

I’m not into total accuracy or sitting there driving my train backwards and forwards so the thought of manually controlled signals did not appeal. Here began initially through ebay a series of emails with Mike concerning the possibility of automating his signals. These emails continued to flow for various months with Mike receiving copies of my circuits so that he could build my automatic signals.

With my birthday falling in September I was able to finally order 2 signals and the necessary control box and I awaited their arrival.

Then the unthinkable happened and my Mum died suddenly on !6^th October. As you can imagine my railway was the last thing on my mind as other more important things had to be faced.

Mike was great and he kept in contact and when I was ready he dispatched my parcel.

Inside was the control circuit housed in a weather proof box, the 2 signals and ladders and all the cables I required. Note the Super Striker box in the background…a game from my childhood!

Inside the control box was this circuit, don’t ask me what’s in it….all I had to do was connect track power, signals and the cables from my LGB point motor with supplementary switch on top.

The signals were quickly put together and the whole lot taken into the garden.

Here you can see everything connected up and ready to go

The first loco was the Track Cleaning loco and it all worked first time.

Thanks to Mike Cullen I now have a line with colour light signalling (I must order one more signal!)

With Christmas approaching I couldn’t not include a couple of Christmas loco shots, the first showing the North Pole Express and the Bauble train.

The last photo shows the North Pole Express with the larger Rope Light version.

If you have any questions you can always contact me through the forum.

Andy Worsfold