Older Inspirational Layouts

[New Haven Neil]

So as not to divert the Ashover thread, I thought I would start this.

 

What older, (60's - 80's, say) layouts inspired you?  In the flesh, or in a magazine.

 

For me, Iain Rice's various Tregarricks were hugely so, but also older things in Railway Modeller back then, Ashover as mentioned, Winton was it, the LNER layout?  Charford, Buckingham, High Dyke, Yatton, Craig & Mertonford, East Suffolk Light,...I could go on.

 

Let's hear your inspirations.

 

edit - It was High Dyke, not Stoke Summit!

Edited January 27, 2013 by New Haven Neil

[beast66606]

Striving - the only layout I have chased around the circuit. (Plenty of other good ones but for me Striving was "it")

[Paul Cram]

For me it was Benfieldside. Wonderfully atmospheric.

[simon hudson]

For me The first time I saw High Dyke at Leeds early to mid eighties and again at I think Newcastle?

I was totally mesmerised by it.The Pullmans always stick in my mind. 

I have fond memories of Tawstock I think it appeared in one of the modelling mags at the time built by Albert Teasdale of Birtley MRC .I know it did a couple of shows around the North West and North East

.Albert suddenly passed away I think the layout was sold to some one from the North West not sure though.I took some video footage of it at the time for Albert

[Danemouth]

When I tried N gauge at the start of the 90s I remember Andy Calvert's "Nether Stowey"

 

Really impressed by it.

 

Dave

[New Haven Neil]

I'm not familiar with 'Striving', must have been when I was out of the hobby - marriage, houses etc.

[New Haven Neil]

Oh, Mac Pryke's S&D layout - tiny, but I loved it, and met him at York?? show with it when he was an elderly gent - and he was a gent indeed, lovely bloke.

 

'Anyone remember the huge TT layout that used to go to Leeds show?  It's annoying me I can;t remember it's name, I think the owner was Alan Smith?

[br2975]

 

'Anyone remember the huge TT layout that used to go to Leeds show?  It's annoying me I can;t remember it's name, I think the owner was Alan Smith?

 

Lydney ?

 

Brian R

[clecklewyke]

'Anyone remember the huge TT layout that used to go to Leeds show?  It's annoying me I can;t remember it's name, I think the owner was Alan Smith?

 

Tetney?

 

Something like that. I never saw it in the flesh but I remember it in RM.

 

Edit - BR2975 beat it me to it and I think got it right. At least I got one syllable correct. 

Edited January 27, 2013 by clecklewyke

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

'Havil' the De Havilland MRC's layout. Pa was employed in the design shop and the MRC would operate the layout on family open days, among other occasions. A very large layout for its' day and it left a mark on three year old and onwards me for the scope of operation possible on a model railway. And it still exists in modified form, and is operated regularly. http://dhmrs.weebly.com/

[bennyboy]

Evercreech Junction which was featured in Railway Modeller quite a few times in the 80's. I never saw it in the flesh, but it looked stunning from the pictures in RM.

[JohnR]

East Brent, Mac Pryke's S&D layout was such an inspiration to me.

 

When I was a lad (cue Hovis music), I used to love rummaging through the boxes of old modelling magazines and buying interesting ones for a few pennies pocket money - new ones were few and far between in them days..... some of the older layouts were really inspirational at the time, but Mac's has stayed with me after all of those years.

[Poggy1165]

Buckingham (natch!), Berrow, Charford, Craig and Mertonford, Marthwaite, Presson, Portreath.

 

In later years, Whetstone, that wonderful P4 layout based on Robin Hood's Bay whose official name I have temporarily forgotten, Runswick Bay.

 

There are others too, I hope their creators will forgive my increasingly feeble memory.

[Happy Hippo]

Ken Northwood's North Devonshire Railway.

 

Regards

 

Richard

[Barry Ten]

As a young modeller the layout I was most fired up by on a regular basis was Linfield, which used to appear regularly in Model Trains and Scale Model Trains. Although it dated from the 60s, and in some of the articles the track wasn't even ballasted, the layout nonetheless had (to me) a great sense of place and time, being set somewhere in LMS/GWR territory. It was also built in a small room, on a scale I could relate to - unlike some of the larger layouts, it was possible to translate some of the ideas into my own efforts (or rather, persuade my dad that we needed this or that). Although double-tracked through its station, it had a section of single-line running on the other side which I found very attractive and most of the layouts I've built since have been either totally single-track, or double track with a section of single-line. The author (Richard Gardener, I believe) did lots of articles on detailing RTR locos which were usually shown running on Linfield, adding to the sense of  the layout as a real entity.

 

Another layout from the same era, and which also had a huge impact on me, was Hebden Junction which appeared in the 1981 MRC annual. Again, it dated from the 60s, but there was a terrific atmosphere to the thing and it was pretty much my idea of a "dream layout" for many years, with a big station over the tracks, lots of running lines, a double track junction into separate MR and LNWR main lines. Cracking stuff, and the structures and scenery looked very good for the time. Again, it was a layout I tried to replicate at home but the reality was I didn't have the room so my efforts always ended up looking half-baked.

[bluebottle]

... that wonderful P4 layout based on Robin Hood's Bay whose official name I have temporarily forgotten ...

 

Tom Harland's "Bramblewick"? http://www.scalefour.org/layouts/exhibbramblewick.html

 

Gordon

[Kris]

When I tried N gauge at the start of the 90s I remember Andy Calvert's "Nether Stowey"

 

Really impressed by it.

 

Dave

Agreed, a lovely layout. I was surprised at just how small it was when I saw it.

[beast66606]

I'm not familiar with 'Striving', must have been when I was out of the hobby - marriage, houses etc.

 

Circular layout, LMS Western division.

[Coombe Barton]

Repeating what others have said

• Mac Pyrke's Berrow
• Peter Denny's Buckingham
• Dave and Shirley Rowe's Exebridge
• And before that, their Llareggub
• David Jenkinsons many epics
• Iain Rice's North Cornwall stuff.

Those I can remember. But doubtless there have been many others.

[forest2807]

Bredon, built on a 6'4 x 4 ft board to show what could be achieved with proprietary stock in a limited space. Incredibly atmospheric. It was in the RM in the mid 80's if I remember correctly.

Kyle of Tongue too, which captured the bleakness of the Far North perfectly, and inspired my first Lima Class 33 to 26 conversions. The less said about them the better!

[The Stationmaster]

Frank Dyer's Borchester - always for me a demonstration that you could build a model of an operationally logical railway doing what such a railway would have done had it been real.

[Guest]

Presson, EM gauge by one John Langan. I were nowt but a lad when I first saw it featured in Railway Modeller but I remember thinking how fine it looked when compared to my Tri-ang stuff.

[New Haven Neil]

Dave and Bev Lowery's LNWR layout - I forget the name!

[Grovenor]

Striving - the only layout I have chased around the circuit. (Plenty of other good ones but for me Striving was "it")

Showing good taste there Beast  

Keith

And long before that the Manchester "Dog track".

[Guest jonte]

Dave and Bev Lowery's LNWR layout - I forget the name!

Brevett, if I'm not too much mistaken.

 

One of my favourites too. Saw it at an exhibition at Merchant Taylors' school in Crosby sometime in the early eighties. Measured something like 4' x 30" if my memory serves me right with all the work being done by an ancient 2-4-0 tank engine acting as station pilot.

 

Jonte.