These pages detail the construction of our N Gauge Model Railway layout and some of the ideas behind it.

Please feel free to skip the boring bits and use the buttons above to navigate if you start to nod off . . .

Why model railways?

Well a few years ago I was sitting at home one winter’s day watching the rain drizzle down the windows outside stopping me from indulging my other hobby – Cars. What I needed was an indoor hobby, something long-term that I wouldn’t get bored with. Something else transport-related obviously!

Now I’ve never been much of a “trainspotter” as such – not that there’s anything wrong with standing on a draughty old station writing down numbers if that’s what floats your boat (mixing my transport metaphors here), just that it never appealed to me. But trains have always fascinated me: the engineering, the mechanical effort, the sounds, the smells (anything powered by coal or crude oil derivatives is fine by me). So revisiting the childhood I never properly grew out of I decided a model railway was in order, not a flat-board stored-under-the-bed toytown effort this time though, but something that hopefully would be good enough to take along to exhibitions.

Why N Gauge?

As a child it all started with my older brother's oval of Hornby OO (16.5mm) track and a couple of sidings nailed to a painted piece of chipboard, and trains running at maximum speed most of the time! A switch to N Gauge - roughly half the scale of OO and running on 9mm track - meant that effectively four times more track and scenery could be squeezed onto the same size board. This layout was more detailed with a three-track station long enough for scale-length trains, a selection of goods sidings, and a long tunnel. It was also a first-foray into scenic techniques using scatter. Inevitably once cars came along in our late teens the railway was forgotten.

And so we come to the present layout. This time a lot of planning and thought has gone into exactly what I want out of it, and how to get there in the best way. This is not a solo effort either - although I use the term 'I' throughout this part of the site my fiancée Clare has assisted in many aspects whether it be interesting ideas, help with scenery, or just accepting that a lounge filled with model railway or millions of polystyrene fragments is 'normal' !

LET THE MODELLING BEGIN !!!

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