Further to my previous blog post 'What next?' I have been thinking about where to go now in terms of layout building and what to do next.

As mentioned before, Leahurst Road is almost finished, with only tiny bits to do here and there. I feel as though I have gone as far as I can with the current layout in terms of construction and it is fully operational. To be realistic, it was an exercise to try out new things and to have a layout with more operational interest than my previous projects. Problem I have now with it is space, or the lack of it for the growing fleet as Leahurst Road can only accommodate a maximum of either 3 units or 4 locomotives. That to me is no longer enough and I feel like I have exhausted the small space layout idea, that is why I would like to build something bigger. I don't wish for a huge layout that goes around the edge of a loft/railway room etc, I still like the idea of an end to end terminus.

I remember an article on Railway Modeller (Dec 2003 issue) that showed Addiscombe station. This back then inspired me to build a layout that was heavily based on it, alas the lack of southern region EMU stock back then put an end to that, until recently..... I now have a sufficient fleet of EMU's, DMU's and DEMU's, along with locomotives to get that idea going again! The only thing that has put me off at this moment in time is the space in the current house, that problem will hopefully be gone when we move to Lincolnshire later on this year. I am planning on having my own ''railway room'' if I am allowed though and if the next place has a spare room

I have drawn up a couple of plans, but I was scrimping on pointwork as it can be quite costly. However, I have noticed that scrimping might compromise the layout to the point where the end result would not be how I vision it. So, my idea is to gert a shopping list together and slowly buy things for the new layout bit-by-bit, then it wouldn't be as tough on my wallet (in theory!)

In short, the ''Addiscombe'' plan will be a two platform terminus, long enough for a 4-car EMU, with a couple of sidings and a carriage shed. It will be heavily based on Addiscombe but slightly compressed, if I model it as it is then it could easily be a 10-12ft scenic area.... I think I can compress it to 8ft then add a small fiddle yard.

These are the original plans I drew up quickly on Paint:

And the scrimping one....