Found at the end of a siding, off the main line and quite hidden away we find a small hive of activity as the Express Dairy creamery goes about its business of processing milk.
A small Ruston & Hornsby 48DS potters about moving wagons and tanks around be unloaded, loaded or made ready for collection by the next train.
Once upon a time, there were lots of small privately owned railway systems that connected to the main line.
These systems served industry and could vary in size from a single siding to miles of track.
The industry could be anything from a coal mine to a steel works, or a biscuit factory or dock yard.
This small layout represents a creamery owned by Express Dairies. There is a small shunting locomotive, a 48DS, to move the wagons about the yard.
Amongst the wagons are the milk tanks, each being able to hold 3000 gallons (11356litres) of milk. These would be attached to express trains to take the milk to London. But wagons would also take other products.
This little layout, made of just two turnouts (points) and four straight tracks may look like it would be boring to operate. But do not be deceived, as it is both a model railway and a shunting puzzle of a type known as an Inglenook.
A small project like this is ideal to test out new ideas and skills and can be completed in a very short time. I built this layout during ‘lockdown’ and shows how easy it is to build a small layout in a minority scale such as EM. It is just a small shunting layout built in the ‘Cameo’ style to present a scene that is intended to be pleasing to the eye, plus, it can sit a quiet corner of the house and be ready to operate at any time. Daisy sits on a bookcase in my home office.
At the end of the day, I can happily spend a quiet 15 minutes or so doing some wagon worrying, as I solve the puzzle, and feel the woes of the day lift off my shoulders.
I hope that it will give you the inspiration to build your own small finescale project or even just an inglenook shunting puzzle.
This layout featured in the November 2025 edition of the Railway Modeller.
Layout plan
What’s an inglenook shunting puzzle?
The original Inglenook Shunting Puzzle was created by Alan Wright in 1979 and has quite simple rules: It consists of three sidings, two of which can hold three wagons and one capable of holding five. The headshunt can only take three wagons and the locomotive.
The aim is to sort five wagons into a randomly selected order from the eight on the puzzle, either with cards or a computer app. The stock can be identified by number, type or colour.
On this layout the randomizing is done with cards and the wagons identified by their number. Sometimes, to make it more challenging, I will just use wagons of one type, normally brown fitted vans.
There are many variations of the theme, from sorting three out of five, to six out of ten etc. The only limitation being the length of the headshunt and shorter sidings controlling the number of wagons to be moved at any one time.
Further information
Find out more about the construction of the layout on RMWeb
The excellent website on shunting puzzles
A 1950’s film made by Express Dairies about how milk was delivered and featuring (briefly) the locomotive on the layout.
Express Dairy Tales, a great archive of information about Express Dairies.
Find out more about the 48DS locomotive. with a video review by Laurie Rose of his own loco.