Or as those who know me may be saying, "this isn't Thai, it isn't 3mm scale, what are you up to?"

Well indulging myself in something completely different. I have dabbled in 7mm scale narrow gauge in the past, mainly modelling 2' gauge industrials so it is not completely off the wall. However I never came up with a suitable layout concept to take it beyond just building a few kits. In the process though I acquired a number of books, was an original subscriber to Roy Link's Narrow Gauge and Industrial magazine and generally got a feel for that sort of railway. Living just a dozen miles from the Amberley Chalk Pits museum didn't do any harm either. So my interest in Industrial narrow gauge has some history.

Now on the layout front, I have a layout under construction. I wouldn't say it's an exhibition layout but exhibiting it is not ruled out. It's my Maenamburi layout based on modern, well nearly modern, Thailand railways. It's progressing as fast as one man jobs do, or at least as fast as one man jobs progress when nearly everything has to be researched, designed and built from scratch. Then I have a couple of 3mm scale projects but these are not intended to develop into layouts.

Maenamburi however is four metres long and setting up with the off stage bits of fiddle yard and loop requires another two metres. That is possible in my present abode which has downstairs rooms which can be opened up to ten metres long space. At my age though I have to recognise that some downsizing will be required some time and that in the next ten years or so I may find myself with a much less generous space in which to indulge my hobbies. Maenamburi will probably not fit and the idea of a terminus to fiddle yard 3mm scale layout does not appeal. Something else is needed.

The more I thought about large scale narrow gauge, the more I realised it need take up no more space than a OO set track layout. An industrial 0-4-0ST on 2' gauge is no bigger modelled to 7mm scale than a standard gauge tank modelled in OO. A 350mm radius curve, one of the sharpest in OO set track, works out as 50' radius in 7mm scale, which is quite generous for 2' gauge industrials. And why stick at 7mm scale, why not go further to 1:32 scale? This is a military modelling scale so figures, vehicles, oddments like tools and bottles are easily available.

I had already made an interesting discovery. Years ago I bought a Roy Link kit of a 7" Bagnall 0-4-0ST in 7mm scale and intended for 14mm gauge. I started building it but as usual with me other interests got in the way. Around that time too I obtained a small booklet on the Brede Waterworks tramway, an 18" gauge line used to carry coal and materials to the waterworks serving Hastings in Sussex. There was a drawing of the line's solitary locomotive, also a Bagnall product. I compared it to the drawing in the Link kit and discovered that for most of the major dimensions - wheel size, wheelbase, length, width, boiler length, firebox size - the larger Bagnall in 7mm scale and the smaller Brede Bagnall in 1:32 came out the same, give or take a millimetre. Obviously the cab needed to be made higher, and thus the funnel longer, but most of the Link kit could be used to make the Brede Bagnall in the larger scale. And 14mm gauge is almost spot on for 18" gauge in 1:32.

A second impetus came from a most unlikely source, Channel Five's Great Model Railway Challenge. I was a team captain in the second series. Those not involved in the programme are probably not aware that teams have to submit their plans and make preparations for every round up to the final even though most teams are eliminated in the first round. We didn't make it beyond the first round but had we made it to the final we had an off the wall design where instead of vanilla OO we would use OO gauge track, actually PECO On16.5, and model large scale (1:32) narrow gauge. The theme was "Surprise surprise" so we thought one surprise would be that every figure on the last layout would be a giant compared to the OO figures seen earlier. Obviously we couldn't buy locos and stock so the plan was to hack some Hornby Smokey Joes into something vaguely narrow gauge and resin cast some suitable wagons. The wagon type I chose was the War Dept four wheelers from Deptford which ended up on the Sand Hutton line. And I had made the master out of Plastikard. It seems a shame not to use it.

The Brede Tramway booklet also provides a framework for my tramway. The Brede tramway initially ran from a wharf on the River Brede. This wharf was at the limit of navigation and was served by barges coming up from Rye Harbour. These barges brought the materials for building the waterworks and then, for about twenty years, also the coal for the pumping station. From the wharf the tramway headed across the fields to a small depot where the loco was maintained. This was also the closest point the road got to the waterworks, and in the later years of operation coal was brought to this point by steam lorry. From the depot the line set off again across the fields to the pumping station. These features, wharf, depot, etc can all be modelled in a relatively small space as cameos, and that is how my thinking is headed at the moment.

First off though I need to build the stock