My interest in trains began at a very early age. Ever since I can remember I have enjoyed the thrill of steam. In my younger years I was taken to many preserved railway lines and exhibitions. My dad was, and still is, into the hobby and so he passed the bug onto me. I began, as many typical children do, with Thomas. It was nothing fancy like the Thomas today, just a few push along trains on a red plastic track. It then extended to the wooden trains and finally in 2001, at the age of ten, I received my first Hornby electric train set, Nº R1016, the ‘Caledonian Local’ as a Christmas present, and so the story began.

My first layout began, and with my dad’s help, I built up hills, tunnels and other general scenery. Birthdays and Christmases flew by and I expanded. Then in 2006, about a week before Christmas, I decided to make some ‘minor’ improvements. I stripped the layout down to the board and began afresh, this time with no borrowed rolling stock or scenery, and this time it would be all my own work. Two years went by and nothing really happened. The track underwent many permutations, many unsuitable, unobtainable, or unworkable. Finally I came to a happy medium, and so it has stayed. The scenery has been built up and earlier this year the switch over to digital began.

Although still continuing with my OO Scale layout, I have also started a new project in N Scale. I had wanted to create an end to end N gauge for a while, but it was the release of Dapol’s terriers that marked the beginning of the venture. With this layout I hope to build it up to a high standard, and eventually exhibit it at various shows. The main object of the layout is to prove that a small layout can be created on a tight budget, and that digital or computer control is not needed to create a self running layout. All that is required is a loco, a shuttle unit, points that you can trail through, and a clever track design, and the loco will happily run on it’s own on an end to end layout with out the aid of an operator.