Greetings and welcome to my blog. I plan to add to it on a regular basis similar to Geoff (Sparky) with his Penhydd layout and show you fine fellows the progression (or lack of!) that I make. I'm more than happy for people to comment with any advice that they might have as I need to learn!

I first started modelling properly when I was 15 years old when I created a basic GWR branch line terminus set in the mid 1930s. The layout used a mixture of old SMP track left over from my late grandfather's layout and Peco code 75 for the fiddle yard. I learnt a huge amount from this layout, one of the main things being wood working skills. Previously all my wood working had been done under the knowledge and supervision of grandpa and his workshop. At this point my dad worked away from home and if I wanted a baseboard built one had to do it one's self or wait for several days or possibly weeks before he would be home to help! I also learnt basic wiring skills along with scenic work and tried carpet felt long with lint as used in Barry Norman's book Landscape Modelling.

Well after a break from modelling whilst at university I decided to get back into it again two and a half years ago with a view to continuing working in 00, the plan had been to create Horrabridge with I am sure a number of readers have already seen the old thread on the old version of RMWeb. However I started to feel that I wanted to go beyond 00 as a scale and work towards something finer. I did consider EM, but the lack of a club within the local area put me off. At this point I met the good Captain and the rest is as they say history, I decided to dump the EM idea and go for P4 having attended the local area group and been inspired by P4 as a scale.

Right to business. I have decided to start constructing a near to scale model of Horrabridge, which is a small country station in West Devon. The charm of this station really lies with its location. The station site features two goods buildings, a level crossing and a small girder bridge spanning the main Tavistock to Plymouth road.

My model will be some 20ft long by 3ft wide, allowing a nice slice of the Devon countryside to be modelled. The layout will be built as a roundy-round and although it will become a permanent feature of the loft, it will built to be as portable as possible so that it can be built in sections down stairs before it is moved upstairs. I also plan to bring some of the boards along to DRAG (P4 area group meeting) for advice once in a while. The fiddle yards will be a mixture of loops and cassettes. The idea being that 8 trains can be made up in four loops (each loop will be about 12foot long) and stock can be easily swapped about using the cassettes which will form one of the loops. To be totally honest I could probably get away with just the loops, but the cassettes will add extra flexibility and will make turning locomotives easier.

Originally I was going to use ply and rivet for my track work, but I am now being persuaded to use Exactoscale plastic bases and chairs for speed. Thinking long term it will be easier to weather the side of the rail as the whole track can be sprayed and then painted accordingly. Also having seen the progression on TT2 using fast track bases, I think that for me it is the best opition at this stage.

Anyway as a starting point John Farmer very kindly salvaged some of the old boards from TT1; I thought that these could form the foundations for a fiddle yard. I'm still a little unsure at the moment what to do with them, they do require quite a bit of work to get them up to scratch, but I think with a new top surface they should be satisfactory to get something up and running as a temporary solution! The scenic baseboards will be an adaption of the beam method and eventually I will construct new boards for the fiddle yard to keep a standardised system!

Anyway enough for now. Thanks for reading.

Kind regards,

Nick.