My name is Mike Morgan, I work full time, I'm a District Councillor and father of two teenage children; when I get 5 minutes spare I enjoy building model railways. I've called this blog starting in the middle, not because I stand in the middle of an oval circuit, but because I've already made some progress towards building my layout.

It all started when I was 14. I'd had a bad year, spending a few weeks in hospital having my appendix removed, then a few weeks with an unidentified gastric problem. My parents who were anything nut rich took pity on me and splashed out on a Hornby train set. I no longer have any of the track, or the carriages, but I do have the original locomotive, in it's original box. It was a generic 0-4-0 steam loco with a distinctively American look to it. I saved almost every penny I had to by extra track and within a year was in a position that it was too much work to put it all together when I wanted to use it and take it all apart when I had finished. I went with my father to the local hardware store and purchased an 8 x 4 sheet of 1/2" chipboard. We carefully strapped it to the roof of the car (no roofrack!) and set off the half a mile homeward. 300 yards short of the house a gust of wind caught the front of the sheet, ripped it in two and sent half of it across the road into the path of an oncoming vehicle. The impact with the floor took a 4" chunk out of one corner and the oncoming vehicle left a perfect tyre mark diagonally across it. Having got it home, we proceeded to place three lengths of 2 x 1 timber longitudinally to a) give the board some rigidity and B) pin the two halves together. No thought at all was given to horizontal rigidity whatsoever. My first permanent base had been created. Clearly, several mistakes had been made along the way, but that's how we learn. This tale has pretty much set the tone for my approach to modelling: Some people do months of research before adding a new rivet to a model, me I just give it a go, if it looks right and it works I leave it alone... Unless I chose to tweak it later.

So, 33 years later and where am I now. Despite several house moves and the arrival of a wife and two children, in that order, my collection of railway bits had continued to grow. With my last house move some eight years ago, I insisted that the new house would wither have a) a dedicated railway room or B) sufficient space in the garden for railway only shed. Mrs Morgan decide she preferred plan b, and as in all things that require planning, Mrs Morgan got her way. Within 6 months of moving in, I'd acquired a very impressive 12 x 8 shed. I spent a small fortune lining it with polystyrene insulation and 6mm ply for the walls, all cut by local timber merchant to my specification and, much to my surprise it fitted. A power supply was laid on and I was ready to go. After the usual collection of false starts I finally had a layout planned using AnyRail on the PC. (I liked this product, I found easy enough and flexible enough for a beginner to do a reasonable job.) Baseboards were built, properly this time, using a standard 2 x 1 frame and topped with 9mm ply. The track plan was printed in 12" to the foot scale and pasted to the boards and track laying began.

Lesson 2: Don't glue Trackbed to the plan, you won't be able to see the all important locations for placing your points!

I've already laid 90% of the track on what I refer to as the main oval. (I'll include some photo's soon so you can see what I mean by that.) All my track is Peco Code 100 using insulfrog points. I'm steadily converting my collection of locos to DCC, so only currently have 4 that I can operate on the layout. I could, theoretically operate 5, but I abhor the "singing". The plan over the next few months is to work on the scenery before beginning work on the branch line. I'll log my progress here.