The layout was purchased from eBay as a restoration project in summer 2009.
Overall it measures 4.6m long (15 feet) by 76cm wide (thirty inches). Construction is a softwood frame and legs are topped with ply, MDF, chipboard, etc, and with all of this it's quite heavy.
Points and track are all Peco, with point remote control by cap discharge via switches.
The track has been re-ballasted in places with Gaugemaster ballast, diluted PVA fixing it in place, and assorted craft paints mixed to weather the rails and sleepers.
KPC controllers provide excellent slow speed analogue control.
Since being in our ownership, the layout has had a fair bit of work done on it that you cant even see (such as a full week spent on the wiring, sorting track faults to get it all working. Since then, it has had lots of track reworking to level joins, and additional wiring installed to improve reliability and increase flexibility.
The scenery is gradually being upgraded as time permits. Buildings are by Metcalf (card kits), scenic papers are by Scalescenes, and there's nothing there that you couldn't do yourself.
Rolling stock is varied, and probably needs its own page to cover more fully. There are lots of standard products from Graham Farish, Dapol, and Peco, with older items from Minitrix and Lima. Some specialist kit items comes from Worlsey Works, Taylor Precision Models (TPM), the N Gauge Society, Parkwood, and others.
Some locos have undergone re-sprays by Mk1resprays, MGC Services, HeritageN, and N'thusiast.
For the future... the fiddle yard really needs an upgrade. We'd also like to add working signals (with one working signal already in place - see if you can spot it), improve point control, and undertake a complete rewiring as everything is currently squashed into two inch square electrical trunking, making any fault difficult to find - not much to do then!
Work in 2016 covered some of this, with some radical rewiring of the control panels and associated under-board wiring, plus some scenic changes at the back. Operating the layout is now a bit more complicated but many more train movements can be carried out at once, making for an even-more busy layout during shows.
The layout also appeared in the October 2016 edition of Railway Modeller, Vol 67 No 792 pp 844-849.
