Well the day had to come.

It has taken far longer than we expected for a short and simple chain, but we have finally exchanged contracts and the house move from High Wycombe to north Oxfordshire is finally happening. Consequently I have had to take down the layout. I packaged all the stock and the few buildings that were out over the last few weeks, but was reluctant to take saw and drill to timber until the deal was binding.

So today I have toiled in the baking heat in the loft. It is a good way to sweat off a few pounds!

Although the layout is called Buckingham West, that station still hasn't been built. The only one constructed is Newton Purcell, which is the junction, but it never got connected to the double track circuit. In fact only the circuits, storage loops and reversing loop were connected and operational. So I have made the two Newton Purcell boards transit-proof, by adding extra timber to protect the electronics boards and other vulnerable parts.

The boards for the rest of the layout (the operating parts) were taken down next. The problem was that they were not built to be moved or split into sections. They were timber frameworks and basically screwed together all the way round. As the track bed was screwed onto the framework and then covered with insulation / fibreboard with the track glued onto that with pva, it was rather tricky.

My best tool for the day was a bread knife. It was brilliant for persuading the track to leave the fibreboard. In most cases it simply lifted away, but in some areas the top layer of fibreboard came with it. That was quite easy to remove and I only lost 1 yard of track and 1 point, which looked as if it was damaged when laid.

What is more, I managed to preserve the majority of the storage loops on a board. I also saved the twin double junctions on another board. The rest of the boards had to be fully dismantled and mostly scrapped. Some timbers are saved.

I still have the Buckingham West board to dismantle and then to get them all out of the loft!

In the new house, I have a larger railway room and so Marples and Beeching will not get their way with Buckingham West (even though in 1936 to 38 they were never even thought about).

The lessons I have learnt and will rectify in MK2 are to make the height differences between the levels less than in MK1. The gradient I would have needed was far too steep. So I will have no gradient steeper than 1 in 60 and hopefully flatter than that. I will also add more storage loops, make sure there is nothing directly above the loops (Newton Purcell was directly over the loops), use set track for the reversing dumbbell, and make all the boards as separate units bolted together.

So here's to MK2.

Rich