Model Railway Forum

Welcome to my new thread in the members' layout section. I have had a similar thread in the HO & International section for some time, but I want to break out of that niche section and bring my layout to a new and wider audience.

This layout was designed and built purely for exhibition use, it is too big (26ft x 10ft) to be set up and run at home. To be honest I have no interest in running layouts at home - I am an 'exhibitionist' pure and simple - I have built seven layouts in my life and none of them have been a home layout.

This thread will not be about how I constructed this or that - the layout is now 99% finished - it will be a record of the layout's life on the exhibition circuit and I discussion forum about my philosophy of reaching out from my VERY small target market - Chinese railway enthusiasts - to entertain and educate a wider public.

So with no more ado let me post a photo which will, I hope, intrigue you and have you coming back for more. This photo was taken at the Bristol show in May 2018 by Andrew Burnham, editor of Continental Modeller.



PLEASE keep watching out for further posts in the next few weeks.

Warley 2019 was our 4th and currently last show. A German YOUTUBER made this video. It does not show the layout at its best because he arrived just before closing time on the Sunday and TBH we had already taken many trains off the layout and packed them away and so you see the same train more than I would like. I have made major changes to the layout since Warley and when we show it next time it will be much improved, but this is what the layout looked like six moths ago … just click on this link ………………...

https://youtu.be/e_El57wy8_c

Very atmospheric layout. I remember seeing photos of it in the HO section and liking it. I'm impressed by some of your details such as the laundry drying on the balconies and the lit-up shop fronts with figures inside.

I have been working away for days now on putting figures into one of my long passenger trains. It currently consists of 18 cars (soon to be 20!) as passenger trains in China can be VERY long! So, excluding the baggage and generator cars, there are 16 coaches to fill with passengers!

Here is one of the most interesting ones - the dining car. I like my figures to interact with each other in little cameos and not just get plonked down randomly and so look for the waitress taking orders and the standing American couple standing in the aisle looking for an empty table.

In the past I never liked lit coaches as I associated them with the Fleischmann layouts of old with passenger trains with lights which were far too bright and toy-like. In other words, for me, lit coaches = toy trains. However, I soon realised that viewers at exhibitions were missing all this interior detail because the coaches were too dark. So, I looked into what was available nowadays and discovered a system by Layouts4U which is battery powered and gives a nice subtle level of light and so I am gradually adding this system to my train.

And here it is with the top off - the tables are built into the coach body so are missing in this photo.