McKinley is a large, privately-run model railway based in the heart of Dorset. It’s built to British OO gauge and runs entirely on DCC. Our setting? The golden age of British railways – the exciting years between 1955 and 1975, when steam was fading and diesels were taking over.

McKinley’s main lines loosely follow the proposed HS2 route from London to Birmingham and Manchester… though we must point out we had the idea first! In the current phase, the line pushes further north into our own “Northern Powerhouse,” linking to Sheffield, Wakefield, and Halifax.

This gives us a great canvas to model all sorts of traffic and scenes – busy city terminals, local freight yards, and rural outposts.

The first phase of McKinley was completed back in 2006 and served us well for a decade of operating nights and visitor sessions. In 2016, we started a major expansion that technically wrapped up in 2022. Today, McKinley fills three rooms, includes 1,500 metres of track, and has a greatly expanded fleet of stock – particularly on the freight side.

The whole layout is designed for operation, not just display. It’s a railway with places to go and things to do.

One thing that makes McKinley special is how we use time as well as space. The layout doesn’t just represent one static era – instead, we operate across the whole 20-year transition from steam to diesel. We wanted to show how much the railway changed in that time: engines, carriages, wagons, liveries, and working practices all evolved dramatically.

To do this, we built a huge, fully automated storage system that sits below the “Northern” room of the layout. It contains 180 storage roads across three levels – enough to house hundreds of trains, all ready to appear in the right time period.

We move the clock forward by one month for every hour of running time. So, to see a full sweep of the era, you’d need to visit us regularly – every few months, the landscape changes.

Right now, the McKinley roster includes around 440 locomotives (with over 300 diesels), 1,400 wagons, 440 coaches, and 160 DMU vehicles. You won’t see them all in one visit – just the ones appropriate for the current date.

McKinley is run by a combination of humans and computers. The human operators look after the seven staffed locations – four stations and three yards. The computer handles the two main lines that link them all together.

We call the two lines red/green and blue/black. Think of them as big, double-track ovals – they twist and loop through the layout rooms, dipping in and out of sight. But underneath the complexity, they’re simple, reliable loops that the computer controls.

If you’ve ever seen a club layout with a station at one end and a fiddle yard at the other, imagine that – now multiply it by seven, and link them all together via two hidden main lines. That’s McKinley.

As an operator, you’re not responsible for the whole system. You just look after your assigned area. The computer delivers the trains – you handle everything in between, from loco changes and servicing to assembling new departures.

Let’s say you’re working at Manchester, one of our two big terminus stations. You’ll see trains arrive from the main line – perhaps a busy passenger express, perhaps a block freight – and then you take over. Steam engines may need coaling and turning. Passenger sets may head to carriage sidings. Wagons might need shunting into local industries.

When your train is ready to depart, you hand it back to the computer, and off it goes to its next destination.

We run McKinley every Thursday evening, plus one weekend each month. A full session might involve 20 people – each managing a station or yard, or working in the control room to oversee the computer side of things. But we can run with fewer too, by slowing the timetable and scaling things back.

It’s all about teamwork and having fun – the atmosphere is friendly, busy, and cooperative.

If you're new to McKinley, don’t worry – no experience is required. We’ll teach you everything you need to know, and you’ll always be paired with someone who’s already familiar with how things work.

Training usually starts at the London terminus – it’s a great spot, spacious and a little less intense than some of the other locations. You’ll get to know the Digitrax throttles, learn how to use the uncouplers, manage engines, and interact with the timetable.

The interface is logical and user-friendly. If you’re comfortable using a mobile phone and have a basic grasp of railway operation, you’ll be up and running in no time.

The technology behind McKinley is impressive, but it’s largely invisible to operators. Everything is powered by our Digitrax DCC system, and the main lines are managed by Train Controller Gold, which has been the brain of the layout since 2004.

There are track occupancy sensors, route settings, point and signal control, and even RFID readers hidden under the baseboards that tell us exactly which train is where.

As an operator, all you really need is your handheld throttle, an iPad for the local timetable, and your location’s control panels. There’s nothing to fear – it’s simple, logical, and reliable.

McKinley began as a dream – the vision of layout owner David Townend. As a boy in the 1960s, he was a keen train spotter at Bristol Temple Meads, mesmerised by the Westerns and Warships that thundered past.

“I always dreamed of building a huge layout,” David says. “I imagined Hornby track plan number 18 – which didn’t even exist – and I built that fantasy in my head. When the time came, I finally had a house big enough to make it real. I didn’t know what DCC was, but when someone showed me how it worked, I was hooked. Suddenly, anything seemed possible.”

Over the years, that dream has grown – helped along the way by a talented, dedicated team who’ve become close friends. And that, more than anything, is what McKinley is about: friendship, shared enthusiasm, and the joy of railways.