The greatest layouts you never built (and perhaps now never will!)

[Nearholmer]

Exciting day!!

 

At 1000 the doors will open for my retrospective exhibition entitled “All the layouts I never built”.

 

As you can see, these range from huge things in 16mm/ft scale to tiny micros in H0e.

 

A queue of worryingly over-excited middle-aged blokes carrying rucksacks is already forming outside. 
 

 

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Keith Addenbrooke]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Exciting day!!

 

At 1000 the doors will open for my retrospective exhibition entitled “All the layouts I never built”.

 

As you can see, these range from huge things in 16mm/ft scale to tiny micros in H0e.

 

A queue of worryingly over-excited middle-aged blokes carrying rucksacks is already forming outside. 
 

 

 

Very good, thanks Kevin.  You win today’s ‘prize’ from me at least 😀.  Have a good day, Keith.

[Nearholmer]

The best parts of the show are the catalogue (hundreds of pages of diagrams and descriptions), and the “installation”, where I sit for long periods in a comfy armchair, apparently asleep, but actually adding further exhibits to the show in real time (a gallery was deliberately left empty to accommodate these, although it was difficult to decide how big it should be). I expect to add at least one significant piece in TT120, but that maybe difficult because thinking about it brings to mind that awful photo in RM this month showing SK holding a TT A4 in the palm of his hands; quite disturbing.

[Nearholmer]

And, this afternoon we will be visited by Vivienne Westwood-Emming, daughter of Lord Westwood and pioneer new-wave imaginary layout creator, whose work caused such a stir in the 1970s, but was unfortunately all destroyed when a completely empty warehouse burned down at a time when the Scraatchy Brothers needed the insurance money.

 

 

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by Nearholmer

[F-UnitMad]

20 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

thinking about it brings to mind that awful photo in RM this month showing SK holding a TT A4 in the palm of his hands; quite disturbing.

Personally I'd find any photo (or TV show) with SK in it disturbing. 😖

 

I take it your photo is just of Hall 1.? Can you direct me to Halls 2 - 7, please? I'm particularly interested in the life-size trains & layouts you never built, especially the North American stuff.

[Nearholmer]

It was prohibitively expensive to hire indoor space for most of the full-size exhibits, but if you can spare time to look round the extensive grounds you can see the Cuckmere Valley LR and several other British LRs; the Newport Pagnell to Olney and Wellingborough Rlectric Traction (a 3’6” gauge “inter urban”); The Cobham Railway (2ft Gauge, built 1868); and, of North American interest, the long and rambling 3ft gauge line operated using Porter 0-4-0ST, based on a combination of the Huntsville and Lake of Bays, and the Dolly Varden Mnes Railway. There are other things out there, but I’ve temporarily forgotten what they are.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

Oops!  It (finally) dawned on me yesterday that I’ve “accidentally” been collecting rolling stock and building kits recently that would have been perfect for three* of the many schemes I’ve had for many years as mere pipe dreams.  I don’t have the space, time or budget to realise my grand designs of course, but perhaps the dreams will still - albeit in some small way - become a reality.  I’d not thought of it like that before.  No wonder I’m enjoying the hobby 🙂, Keith.

 

(* though not the B’ham New St. scheme I described in my 10th Jan post)

[Killybegs]

Bristol Bath Road shed and the South end of Temple Meads. I never got beyond producing the track plan. The same with Tiverton Junction. At least my plan for the latter made it into MRJ!

[Killybegs]

Then there was Patchway. If DCC had been around in 2000 it could well have been Patchway in my railway room, not Worseter. Bristol TM and Patchway were my two spotting locations and DCC would have allowed me to have bankers dropping off the back of up freights as they passed through the station.

 

 

[Clearwater]

Patchway is also a heavily photographed location making it ideal as a modelling subject.  Though maybe not ideal as so many photos allows the nitpickers a lot of licence!!

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Some aspects are still the same...

[Clive martin]

My grand design dream layout that i will never build is Peterborough set in the 1984 to 1986 period ,must have trains would include the european boat train for Glasgow, Birminghams hauled by class 31s lots of hst action and the afternoon fly ash hauled by a railfreight grey class 58s etc!