Hi folks.

The start of a blog on my first layout for very many years encouraged and helped by my son who has inherited my passion for railways. I live in Bentley in Hampshire and have commuted from Bentley to Waterloo for many years. I have always been interested in the branch line that ran from Bentley to Bordon. Whilst a layout of Bentley would be fun to operate space precludes this so after much deliberation we have landed on a plan based on Bordon designed to fit on three 4' x 3' boards. The boards have been purchased from Model Railway Solutions, assembled and erected in my garage. A fourth board has been assembled for the storage sidings should we ever exhibit the layout but as this doesn't fit in the space in the garage a 3' x1' board is on order to allow us to play trains.

Track work will be Peco code 75 albeit with sleepers respaced to look more prototypical. The track was in stock before any expectation that Peco would do bullhead rail track but is looking ok.

Control will be conventional DC - far too much stock to contemplate DCC and the track plan is quite straightforward although we are planning can control with two controllers. One ostensibly for the Southern and the other for the LMR but both able to control the whole layout.

Buildings are all being scratch built and are in various stages of production. Some drawings have been used from the OPC Southern Branch Lines volume one others have been prepared by me from photographs etc.

I will post some photographs shortly. O