For a few months I had being on the look out for a small box of robust construction, ideally with handles, a lid that would fit in with the rest of the lounge furniture and not look to obtrusive. A lucky find in Hay on Wye led to the purchase of just such an item. The depth of the box was important, it is about 100mm deep on the inside. I wanted to build a small model railway, being a 00 modeller and having a few 009 items of stock, 009 was the obvious choice for scale.

The size of the box is small but not impossible. I wanted it to have section control, point motors and lighting. The only item that would be outside of the layout would be the controller, but everything else would be built into the lid.

Several purchases of balsa wood and other models followed.

I want the layout to basically be packed with detail

I want it to take me a long time to build it with care taken over the design and build.