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Aplogies for not replying sooner, I have only just noticed your post. Thank you for you kind comments. I have tried many different alpines on the layout, some have survived well, others have died. This past winter has been hard on the layout that lives outside in the garden all year. We had a period of excessive rain which made the soil very wet, it then froze in temperatures down to minus 8 deg, followed by a month of no rain and then just recently more excessive rain again. The Thymes have survived all this the best. There are several varieties such as Bressingham Pink, Russetings and Hartland Gold. The next most prolific is Leptinella, again several varieties, the commonest was Platts Black but this suffered badly from the minus temeperatures, but there are many signs of new shoots now as Spring progresses. As you say, there is Pratia Pendunculata in two varieties, Alba, with white flowers and Blue Star with pale blue ones. A good ground cover with tiny leaves is Mentha Requinii, also known as Corsican Mint. This has proved very hardy, unlike Solerolia (Mind your own Business) which has died completely this winter. A couple of others that have died are Sagina and Scelranthus Others have had varying degrees of success. These include various Saxifrage, Sedum, Asperulia, Raoulia, Isotama etc. I have tried to choose alpines with the smallest leaves. This is difficult when ordering on-line as the descriptions always refer to their flowers, not their leaf size. Ice Alpines have been a useful source. But mostly I have bought them from a variety of garden centres and garden shows so that I see them physically before buying them. Some of the conifers at the back will need replacing this summer as they look to be dying very slowly. Other alpines have been easily replaced if they die, I cut out a circle of soil and drop in a replacement. Hope that helps, the layout will be at the Peterborough show next wekend.

This Winter has not been kind to our garden or my Pen-Y-Bont layout. A week of torrential rain, followed by nights of -8 deg, followed by 6 weeks with no rain at all and just when you thought Spring might be around the corner, now back into Winter snow and freezing cold. Still the layout has survived despite mother nature: In warmer times last summer: And now loaded into the van, a complete garden railway, ready to go to Midlands Garden Rail show this weekend for its first public appearance: See you there!

If you buy your locos on the internet from a man in a shed and don’t support the dwindling number of model shops, then they will all be history. If you don’t go to exhibitions and support the local model railway club, they too will be history. I have an exhibition layout that I haven’t the space to use at home so look forward to taking it to exhibitions as an opportunity to operate it. Fortunately, I have my own van to transport it and this figured in my design of layout. Otherwise, I would build a layout of a size to fit whatever vehicle I had available. I do not charge for any expenses, petrol or accommodation, as the exhibition is for my enjoyment of the hobby. If I go out somewhere for the day, I either take a packed lunch and a drink with me or I buy it from a local source. I do not expect exhibitions to provide this to me for free and don’t see why they should. You wouldn’t get this if you went anywhere else for a day out. Every hobby or leisure pastime requires an investment of your time and money. If you can’t or don’t want to, then our hobby doesn’t have much of a future as we know it.

Full list of layouts and traders now on the Statfold website

First frost of the winter and the vegetation continues to spread. Not much of my homemade slate ballast left on show now. Compare with the earlier pictures I wonder what this winter will bring

It's iron powder, bought on the internet. The wagons are left permanently outside on the layout in all weathers, so naturally rust. You can speed up the process with copper sulphate solution or other acids.

slate wagons:

Been building some rolling stock, but not in the manner most might do, I dislike pristine stock and love rust. An etched brass slaters skip wagon: A pair of plastic skip wagons and a Slaters etched brass slab wagon

I did try using miniature magnets on the coupling hooks, but soon abandoned the idea. I now use a small 'L' shaped piece of steel wire (welding rod) glued to the hook and use a long magnet (75mm) buried in the track ballast, so polarity immaterial. I painted white marks on the rail side facing the operator to mark the limit of travel in either direction in which the hook will lift

You won't believe the transformation

Thanks Guys regarding zigzag comment, I have run a slomo fitted loco up a 1 in 20 gradient with no apparent change in performance. The slomo only really controls the acceleration and de-acceleration rate, not the overall running. I have already successfully transported the layout to a small exhibition as a test and all was well. Here it is loaded in the van... And at the exhibition...

Hi Ade correction to the date for Bracknell, it's Saturday 30th Oct not the 31st Have you got a video of your Billy, I would like to see its performance without a slomo, I have yet to see a comparable performance. I use rotary knob transmitters based on Deltang, (the same as C2B) but If I disconnect the slomo there is an immediate change in performance no matter how much I try to control the loco as you suggest.

Thanks Giles But it's not all my fault, I blame Terry Robinson in Australia who produced the Slomo, without which a small end to end layout would not be feasible. I had previously given up using my Roundhouse locos for quite a while as their slow motion performance just wasn't good enough for me. Out of interest, I recently disconnected the Slomo and the change in performance was staggering. Other cosmetic changes to my loco are coal guard rails on the spectacle plates and some cab doors. Since the photo was taken, I have removed the rear coal bunker and now have a flat cab back like yours to slightly reduce the length of the loco further. I also shortened the chassis by removing 10mm from the front end. The smokebox was removed and separated from its mounting plate. The front buffer beam was removed along with the frame spacer immediately behind it. The frames were cut using a fine toothed junior hacksaw. The smokebox mounting plate was similarly reduced by 10mm. New frame spacer holes were drilled in the frames so that the frame spacer could be refitted behind the buffer beam. New right angled brackets were made from pieces of 10mm brass angle and secured to the rear of the buffer beam. Two new holes were drilled in the side frames to secure these angle brackets to the frame to re-affix the buffer beam. Here's another Lady Anne chassis with a modified Katy Body Elsecar 16mm exhibition is on for the 25th of this month and I will be exhibiting Hambleden there. A bit closer to home, it will also be at the Bracknell Railway Society show on 31st October. Steve

I think you should fit a Union Link and Combination Lever, available as spares from Roundhouse. It improves the look of the valve gear. Here's my Lady Anne as seen on Hambleden

Looks very good. I find with these engines that the gas runs out before the water, so topping up the boiler doesn't help. I find it near impossible to add more gas as the gas tank gets hot and the increased pressure is greater than that in the can trying to fill it. I use a small fan betwecan runs to cool the tank down before I can fully refill it successfully. Sometimes you can add a small amount of gas if the filling can is a full one but it invariably only adds another 5 mins of run time.

Hi Jack, I like it, looks very promising already. I am pleased that you felt inspired by my Hambleden layout. Like Dinmore Manor on here, it is possible to produce a realistic model railway to rival anything in smaller scales and with the benefit of live steam. The Slomo is definitely the key to this. I look forward to further updates and will watch with interest. What is your local area? I wish there were more layouts like this and less what I call test tracks with a slight nod to scenery. Just goes to show what can be done with baseboards no bigger than many 00 layouts.

From the outset, this was designed to be a portable exhibition layout. I have dismantled and reassembled the layout several times and the boards slide into a rack mounted in my van to transport it in the same way as I do Hambleden. Hopefully when exhibitions return you will get to see it, but probably not until next year. Here are a couple more photos from last year of the layout set up on trestles in my garden

The key to the success or failure of this design concept is in the planting. Over time the alpines continue to spread and have crossed over from one baseboard to the next and I think will eventually hide all the joins between boards. Here are a few pictures taken last summer. Depending on what month this layout is viewed, its appearance will change from all green through to a profusion of pink, blue and white flowers in the height of summer. The biggest problem so far - birds. I need to keep it covered with netting to stop the birds ripping up the moss looking for grubs.

Another couple of pictures, this time on track ballasting. As the area the model is set in is Welsh slate territory, I used slate for ballast. I made my own from a bag of slate chippings from the local garden centre. Pieces of slate were crushed with a club hammer and then sieved to remove the larger pieces. It has consolidated over time and shows no sign of washing away despite of lot of rain this winter. Next time I will get on to the planting up of the layout using alpines chosen for their small leaf size.

OK Due to the design brief, no wood could be used in the baseboard construction. So like Hambleden, the starting point was polycarbonate roofing sheets to which was bolted 2in deep plastic plant trays. These were fitted with 2in expanded foam insulation sheets painted matt black. For exhibitions, the layout will rest on the beams and trestles used for Hambleden Test setup. The seed trays with the conifers were lated replaced with long plant trays. The backscene boards are plastic sofit boards. The track is Peco SM32 The foam sheets were cut to the track plan, leaving spaces to fill with soil for planting. More to follow....................

After 5 years and 30+ exhibitions it was time to think about a replacement for my 'G' scale 45mm gauge Hambleden Valley layout. It had to be something different. The only criticism I heard was that it was too big to run indoors at home, but could not be left outside in the garden, so neither an indoor layout nor a garden railway. Hambleden was unique in using radio controlled live steam locos on an end to end layout involving lots of shunting of rolling stock. So this time it had to be a 'round and round'. However it also had to be different from the usual offering of unballasted track, a nod to scenery and out of the box rolling stock. The new layout, called Pen-Y-bont, was going to be 16mm scale on 32mm gauge track and be based in Welsh slate territory. However, the unique feature this time was going to be that all the scenery was going to be from real plants, growing in soil and it would be left outside all year, except when dismantled and transported to model railway exhibitions in the back of my van. Would it work - it remains to be seen....................

As I have gone 32mm now, I am converting all my locos from 45mm to 32mm with non-insulated wheels to allow for the slomo so I can now run my locos on your layout. I am writing an article on the new layout but not sure whether to post articles here or send to a magazine, - maybe a cut down version for here, but I still need to finish the layout. I could post some more photos. I have been designing a new signalling control unit for Fawley so have been a bit sidetracked. I don't think I'll build another layout, I still have quite a lot of 32mm rolling stock to build for this one. I have quite a few invitations to exhibitions for later this year, but I haven't decided to attend any yet. Will just have to see how this year goes, I am getting my jab this week and Chris is in the next group so I remain optimistic.

Hi Mike Pleased to see you doing more work on this, it looks very good and hope to see it in the flesh sometime. My new exhibition layout to replace Hambleden Valley has fared well over this wet winter and I hope to have it finished for later this year if and when exhibitions ever return. Have attached a couple of pictures taken in the summer

Roundhouse Billy in headshunt at Pen-y-Bont, my new exhibition layout, waiting next turn of duty

Mike, pleased to see you have picked this project up again. It's looking very good. I love the backscene, I think it makes such a difference, especially in photographs of the layout. This is large scale modelling in a small space done extremely well. I'm tempted to do something similar so that I can run my live steam engines indoors as Hambleden is too long to setup indoors. Keep up the good work. Steve