Beneath the surface

Hans van der Linden (2005)

Hans van der Linden has become a member of the 009 Society only a few months ago. He appeared at our recent February meeting with a bag containing a shoebox layout, a power unit and a box of rolling stock. When he set up the layout on the table, an interesting scene appeared with ingenious fold-up scenery. The layout depicts a tunnel construction site under the surface of a small town. The houses are represented by flat pieces of card with backscene cut-outs glued on. Below the surface two turntables (really sector tables) enable interesting railway traffic to be represented. Hans claimed he had a continuous run on his layout and demonstrated this cheerfully by running a train around the layout, turning it repeatedly on the sector tables. This may be taking things a bit far, but it DOES work…

Photos by Hans van der Linden - click to enlarge.

Front view without the town scenery.

Top view, showing the sector tables protruding from the sides. These can be turned away so the layout can be lowered into the box.

In this view the road surface has been removed, showing the arrangement of the tracks and the sector tables. The hidden track at the top enables the train to run round and reappear from the other side.

Construction train in the open construction pit.

This is what the layout looks like in built-up condition. The town scenery on top can best be described as 'ultra-low relief'…

The entire layout is extremely small.

In this final photo a loading crane has been added.