It started, as so many things do which often fall under the category of 'it seemed like a good idea at the time', over a beer in the Model Railway Club's bar. At the time, I was involved with the MRC's American HO project 'Putnam' on the basis that they were a friendly crowd and used the same DCC system as I had purchased but not yet mastered. On the Thursday evening in question I was lamenting, in no particular order, the megalomania in railway modellers (apparently size really does matter to many of us), the trials and tribulations of being a GWR modeller (we are a hard done by lot after all), the lack of appreciation of the rest of the modelling world for all things Swindon, the infuriating habits of RTR manufacturers who not only to insist on building their dammed creations with the wheels too close together, but also moulding on things like cab-side shutters which make their offering much less attractive for the pre-1930 modeller than they think, and the lack of an EM layout in the club on which to test or run my slowly growing collection of GWR rolling stock and otherwise play trains with at exhibtions etc etc etc.

Unfortunately for me, one of those enjoying my ranting was the Chairman, Leslie. Leslie, with a glint in his eye that boded no good for me, declared I was absolutely right and the way to solve this problem was to put a proposal forthwith to the committee for a new layout that would not need a small army of dedicated volunteers to complete, nor the resources of a small country to finance it. Realising that my bluff had been called and I’d get no peace until the proposal was written (and hopefully rejected as not being ambitious enough), I started thinking.

So how to get an EM group and an EM layout off the ground? Well, numbers were a problem – there were only 2 active EM modellers in the MRC that I knew of – me and TC, who while supportive, was rather busy with the build up to a 2012 summer sporting event in London. Fortunately, Gareth had clearly had too much ale (being from America he just can’t handle the stuff) and volunteered to help, despite not knowing what EM gauge and professing no interest at all in the GWR. Now we had the basis of a group, so we needed a layout plan. A plan was devised and presented to the committee and much to my suprise it was passed, but could we include a narrow gauge option? We could, in due course, if any narrow gaugers were forthcoming.

We now had to build the thing and then Leslie mentioned how nice it would be to have it at the 2013 Alexandra Palace in less than 12 months time - just as a bare boards work in progress, of course, but the two of you should manage that no problem...