3.5mm/HO Gauge
Presented by Matt Strickland
‘Les Caves Du Roy’ is a small HO scale switching layout that attempts to portray the Railways of Lebanon, Le Chemin de fer de l’Etat Libanais (C.E.L), in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War of the 1980s. The layout is set in the eastern suburbs, loosely based on the Dora area which contained a number of petrol companies & terminals.
Despite the on-going Civil War and its devastating effect on the city and its population as a whole, there was always some traffic running on Lebanese tracks; trains moved tons of fuel from refineries in the south to the electricity plants in Beirut and refineries in the north; cement came daily from Chekka to Beirut; and there was some attempt to maintain a commuter passenger service during the unrest. The operations and rolling stock on the layout mainly reflect this traffic. Matt has captured the atmosphere of war-torn Beirut by modelling:
- The different types of architecture seen throughout Beirut, namely classic French, Brutalist 60s/70s, Middle Eastern and bombed/destroyed/damaged versions of such.
- The green line – a line of demarcation in Beirut during the Civil War. It separated the predominantly Muslim West Beirut and its factions from the predominantly Christian East Beirut controlled by the Lebanese Front.
- Numerous posters – different factions of Lebanon’s civil conflict flooded the streets with posters to mobilize their constituencies, undermine their enemies, and create public sympathy for their cause.
‘Les Caves Du Roy’, literal translation ‘The King’s Cellars’, was one of Lebanon’s hottest nightlife spots located at the Excelsior Hotel. Famed in 60s & 70s, it hosted bands, musicians and celebrities from all over the world. Today, in Beirut, you can’t miss the abandoned structure of the hotel, with its walled windows, crumbling balconies and stray cats, the last inhabitants of a building that was once the pride of the city. Matt chose the nightclub’s name for the layout as it represents the prosperous route that Beirut could have taken but unfortunately didn’t, following instead a much darker and destructive path of invasions, occupation, air strikes and car bombs which took the city a further 15 years to recover from and a railway system that never did……still being out of service today.
An article on the layout appeared in the June 2025 edition of Continental Modeller.