As the annual Calgary Model Railway Society Train Show known as Supertrain has attracted more and more visitors, certain people are inquiring about joining a club and participating in the Model Railway hobby. Most layouts exhibited at the show are Club modular layouts that must be assembled in a specific fashion to maintain continuity between modules and create a loop of track which allows members to have their trains simply run in circles. Furthermore, most clubs tend to have a maximum number of members that may actively participate.
After many years of proving itself in Europe and abroad, a new generation of module design has arrived called Free-mo. Free-mo is a truly modular, interchangeable design that permits the greatest flexibility in setup and design possibilities. The Calgary Free-mo group has developed our "flavour" of the Free-mo standards which still allows interoperability with other Free-mo modules. Our goal is to operate as an informal group, which allows for any number of members, levels of participation, or the era of equipment running on the layout.
Typical Free-mo module design is based on a single track mainline centered on a 24 inch wide module. Builders of Free-mo modules are encouraged to be creative with the layout as the ends of the module are what primarily defines compatibility within the Free-mo standards. As such, modules can have different widths, lengths and shapes, and when assembled together with other modules tend to form point-to-point layouts instead of conventional continuous loops. The group has a staging yard and a return loop already constructed and these are placed at the ends of the layout. To see what the Calgary Free-mo group has assembled, take a look at what we've put together at past operations in the events section of this website.
Until now, the group has been encouraged to build 26 inch wide double-track modules to provide greater flexibility in operating during shows. As we now have a sufficient number of double-track modules (read: too many) we can now explore opportunities to build single-track modules, single to double track modules, and even more exotic modules such as wye junction modules which allow for more creativity in assembling the layout.
We invite you to explore our website, find out what we've done at past shows and perhaps encourage you to join in the Free-mo movement and build your own module. Feel free to drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you!