A Brief History of The Auckland Märklin Club Modular Group
The following narrative is historical and the statements re clubrooms, layouts etc., although correct at the time, do not reflect the current situation. With the exception of deleting some non-functional links, I have left the rest largely intact though, because it does give an explanation of how the modular layout concept came into being. Webmaster- May '24
The Auckland Marklin Club Inc has four layouts located at our Onehunga Clubrooms, with our HO Digital layout being the largest, it was constructed some years ago as a Modular Layout, and has been displayed at numerous exhibitions over the years and in many guises, Computer controlled, Analogue, Analogue Control of points, etc etc.
With the move from the Papakura Clubrooms it had fallen into disrepair, and since it's relocation to our Onehunga Clubrooms (a few years ago now), a few of the lads have been slowly working on the Layout to fix scenery, catenary, wiring etc, which had been damaged in the last major move (it still worked, though not without gliches), it has become more of a semi permanent layout now. With that being said, the Club really does need a more transportable exhibition layout.
Enter Steve (that's me) looking for an alternative to a permanent layout at home, with my first attempt at layout building, using a 1200 x 1200mm Baseboard style construction, and after plodding along with the hammer, screwdriver and drill, etc, I had finally! a working (sort of an oval with some sidings etc) Layout. With a few months of "Playing" under my belt, I came to the unfortunate realisation that what I had constructed was less than ideal and not really what one would consider a true "modular" layout. With that in mind, I spoke with other club members and although they had not yet started construction they also had similar aspirations to me (a quality European Modelled Modular Exhibition Layout that could also be easily at home in the garage or basement as on the Exhibition hall floor).
Glen suggested checking out a group called ETE which he mentioned was a large American AC Marklin tracked modular group with Chapters in many States, so I investigated further, while doing my research I also discovered another group which had a large European following, Free-Mo, they are a DC only group.
A unified approach was deemed necessary, I reported back to the other interested club members and as one of them was our President, he suggested we form a SIG or Special Interest Group within the club, so we did. Andrew, Glen and I were the only interested members at the time, so after hours of discussion I was charged with writing up a specification for our Fledgling group, we decided that the ETE standard was well established and used Marklin K track (although running both AC + DC) so with even more Internet research I found that the ETE Great Lakes Chapter had some C Track modules running using only AC (Andrew and I had a large quantity of C track, so excellent!).
"EUREKA!" I thought, I emailed Daniel Roe of ETEGL and was supplied a set of their specs (which varied a little from the original ETE specs). Those guys had the length of 1220mm and width 610mm that we had envisaged for our own modules. I set about modifying various parts of their specs, I redrew the end plates (shallower <less weight>) a different module connecting system, different legs and electrics etc, I pretty much "Kiwised" them! (all construction materials available locally).
click here for AMC Modular Specification pdf, 2.7Mb
We have added a few more members to our little group now and have at least 12 modules (including "Super Modules") under construction and at various stages of completion, at the Feb 07 AGM, the club voted to manufacture 4 corner modules, which forms the basis of a large rectangular exhibition layout.
It's all up hill from here now as we're displaying our modules at large and not so large Exhibitions and Conventions . . .
The Modular group gallery comprises some early construction images and can be found via the link at the bottom of this page