Griffin Yard is a small portable layout built to 009 Standards with Peco track and Maygib point motors.
Until 1968 Bowaters ran a 2ft 6in gauge railway connecting their Kent paper mills at Sittingbourne and Kemsley to a dock at Ridham. For nearly 60 years the railway carried coal, china clay, paper pulp and timber into the mill, and took finished rolls of paper out. Part of this 24 hour operation was a timetabled passenger service for the staff. When the line closed part of it became the Sittingbourne and Kemsley Light Railway, which still runs today.
The scene is based on the central yard of the Sittingbourne paper mill. Most of the buildings are taken from other locations as the originals were inaccesible, but nearly all the locomotives and rolling stock are from the Bowaters railway. When the original Sittingbourne layout was built there were no kits, so all the wagons and coaches were scratch built from Dave Hammersley's own measurements. Two locos were built the same way before being supplemented by kits.
A small shed houses the yard shunter and services main line locos between trains. The fireless loco sometimes has to use the recharging point on a short siding by the mill building, while the others have a small coal stage and water tower. The main line locos bring in loads of baled paper pulp and logs, which are shunted into the covered siding at the rear of the layout. Here the loads can be surreptitiously swapped for rolls of finished paper. Other wagons carry waste paper, china clay and building materials. At shift change time the passenger train appears for the workers at Kemsley Mill and Ridham Dock.
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