Model train layouts


For some reason, I went through a period of being asked to build model train layouts.

One was in the garage attic area of a large Surrey property. 
This layout ran around the room and had to cross a staircase and a doorway.  It also had headroom issues as the roof was angled.
It wasn't a particularly accurate build, as the owner was less than interested in scale and realism (which was very frustrating) , but the customer is always right!

We ended up taking sections of the layout and making them our own. I spent many weekends there with a cup of tea landscaping the bizarre layout that it ended up being.

From memory, the 4 loops of track went through the Yorkshire dales, Zimbabwe, a coastal town called W**nquay, a generic town called Canada and various other weird places.
The Peco track was in pretty poor state, so it wasn't show worthy, but still fun.
The second one was a layout that someone had been paid to start and totally messed up.  It wasn't particularly big, but multi level and build using Märklin rolling stock and track.  Not cheap stuff.

On the right here is how I found it.  The previous guy had messed up the radius curves, levels etc and had basically walked away.  In fact, I don't think it was even this far.

First job. make a plan.   I re-designed the layout and decided on what buildings we would need.
We bought a huge pile of Faller models and I spend a lot of hours building these all up and adding lighting.

The beauty of the Faller kits is they were pre-painted.  You could improve them or weather them, but essentially they were ready to go.

The main station was going to be Bonn.  I installed a small MP3 module and speaker inside the station that announced the trains in German as they arrived and departed.  Complete with fake 'echo'.  If I remember rightly, it was done using some English to German text speech software.
The layout was re-landscaped and built up with news paper, chicken mesh and glue.

There was a lot of hidden wiring.  The level crossing was fully automated and all the signals actually worked and were connected to the track to provide the correct isolation areas.

At the front a small harbour was built with a  custom made balsa ship. 

Not super 'weathered' as the client didn't want that, but still a tidy layout.