I've been what you could call 'Into trains' since an early age. I have a picture somewhere of my first attempt only 12 years ago - a baseboard reclaimed from someone elses layout with rocks (literally!) forming the road boundary. A hill made from papier mache and left white with a road bridge made from a cereal box - the ascent so steep I fail to see how any car would make it up there.
Thankfully, things move on and times change, we grow up and we start to realise that we are starting to get better results from our modelling. The initial 10 or so years are, or were for me, a period where, looking back, everything I made was rubbish but at least I was showing some creative skills and learning from my mistakes.
Fast forward to 2008, I'm starting to get a bit fed up of all these false starts so I decide to plan a layout. This was the start of a steep and wonderful learning curve. It was around this time I joined the brilliant online forum, RMweb, where, with the help of many people, started my journey to planning my first proper layout. Eventually I settled on a plan and I started planning the baseboards. Up until now I used only solid top boards, now I decided to construct some open-frame boards. This leap allowed me flexibility of scenery design and I soon found its advantages. I kept on using new materials I hadn't used before and this experimentation improved my modelling skills and I started to see outstanding progress in my modelling ability.
Since then, I have exhibited the layout 3 times in various stages of construction, each time I am overwhelmed with the response of the general public and other modellers. The highlight for me being the Four Marks Show this year. I lost count of the number of people with compliments, I gained advice, chatted to modellers, found out more about exhibiting and I was told by the organiser that he had been overwhelmed by the positive comments said about me and my layout in particular as people left the show. I guess I'm one of the dying breed of modellers - the young...
13 hours ago
