Hi. I’ve been a lurker on the forum for several years now. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to share their layouts, photos, comments and other content. There are many I follow and watch with interest and you've provided a lot inspiration, ways to do things and answers to questions. Anyway I thought it was about time I took the plunge and shared my own layout – Warphampton. It’s a purely fictional name, simply a play between my name and location.
Warphampton has taken almost 10 years to get to this point including a couple years of procrastination, planning and being brave enough to actually allocate space in the house and start a baseboard. Since then it’s been a leisurely process fitting around family life, work, a house move and other pastimes. Ultimately though, it’s been an enjoyable journey, a source of fun and a great escape from everyday pressures. Now it’s reached a point where I think the scenic work is pretty much done and I feel comfortable sharing with a wider audience.
I made the switch to N gauge in my youth when my ideas outgrew the single OO loop and GWR trainset. It won’t please some but there’s no particular location and the date is sometime in the 2nd half of the 80s drawn from memories growing up.
I’d retained the old Grafar stock of my youth but decided to invest in new DCC locos when returning to the hobby 20 years later. I’ve come to realise it’s not a cheap hobby but then what is these days. I’m satisfied with ‘rule 1’ investments or a 2nd hand bargain that I like the look of rather than modelling prototypical regional formations. So a Scottish region class 25 can appear alongside an Eastern NSE class 47 alongside Western region HSTs – sorry!
My initial ideas were inspired by a layout called Maybury built by David Gotliffe. Maybury was RM Railway of the Month in July 1989. It was my favourite layout back then and I read his article countless times. This was the sole RM issue I kept and I stumbled across it 11 or 12 years ago when my Dad finally asked me to clear out the train stuff from his loft. Arguably reading it again was part of the kick start to get back in. David – if you’re reading this, thank you for the inspiration!
I was never a hard core spotter but just enjoyed watching trains go by at Reading and Twyford stations or stood on a bridge over the 4 tracks at Waltham St Lawrence. My modelling probably reflects this – rekindling the ‘trains going by’ memories rather than pure realism. I’m a big fan of the blue grey, intercity exec and NSE liveries; HSTs, loco pulled trains and DMUs; passenger and some freight for interest.
I wanted some operational interest combined with the chance to just run trains. It’s perhaps a bit crammed in maybe but as you can see from the photos there are 4 loops linking a double decker fiddle-yard, each with 8 storage roads. 4 terminus bays and an MPD were added to the design with the aim (like Maybury) of running loco hauled trains backwards and forwards. However, in hindsight space and limited loco stock compromised the design and utilisation so now the bays accommodate DMUs and the MPD is just a cameo scene. Still for a single user it gives me plenty of enjoyment. However, the final point count was quite a considerable investment in money and time wiring it all in! Next time I’ll work harder to make it more efficient somehow.
As with the rolling stock it’s all ‘rule 1’ scenery with the usual stereotypes of a bus on a bridge, a wedding at the church and everything from quaint cottages to tower blocks but I hope it just about works. Much of it such as signals & trackside details are there to add a look rather than realistically modelled. I had a lot of fun reviving old shop chains, places from my memories or playing around with names of old friends and family. Anyone from Bracknell might also recognise an old landmark or the inspiration behind the rather concrete and blocky appearance I tried to capture with the town scenes. I also wanted a ‘busy Saturday afternoon’ feel, accepting a wallet-saving compromise of using many more but cheaper and less realistic figures and cars.
As you can tell I’m a huge fan of Scalescenes kits as they offer a lot of detail for n-scale and are great value for money. At one point my family thought I was addicted to building John’s kits. I spent as long building all the terraced houses as my wife and daughter spent watching all 10 seasons of Friends, although if I’m honest I was half listening as well!
Over the years I’ve learned a lot and hopefully gained more experience. A few things Id do differently if and when I start a new layout:
- Spend longer getting the track design more effective, simpler and realistic.
- Avoid double decker fiddle yards. It seemed a good idea to provide plenty of storage but in reality the gradients are a bit steep and wow it’s hard to clean those tracks or fix derailments.
- Use bigger castors to make it easier to roll the baseboard around (allows me to store against the wall but walk round both sides).
- Improve my soldering and wiring - neater and more organised.
- Take more time to paint the track and use more scale looking ballast.
- Use less green looking scatter and trees - it’s a bit bright for the look I was hoping to capture.
- Be brave enough to try fully scratch-building some structures. I’ve been really inspired by some great examples in N scale from other modellers on this forum and on YouTube.
I hope you enjoy the outline and the photos . As I run some more trains I’ll upload a few more in the future as I enjoyed taking various shots. If anyone has any questions, comments or wants more detail on any of the layout please let me know below.
