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02nd October 2008
Briers Grove was an idea I had some years back in London, of course I would have preffered a run-round layout, but as space allowed, an end-to-end layout was the reserved choice and I wanted something to offer a little more than just running a couple of locos.
I was introduced to railway modelling by a collegue, Keith Plum, Enfield Town MRC, he introduced me to the club and my interests took off. I'd always been into military modelling, there's some on that later in the blog, but the concept of building a model railway had never entered my head, due to my lack of wiring knowledge, I'm still no good at wiring layouts, but I do love scenic modelling as you'll discover as the blog progresses.
4th October 2008
My first layout was a small 8ft x 2ft end-to-end, named Rogie Falls, a place on the road to Garve in the Highlands. If was never modelled on Rogie Falls, I just took the name. If i can find the photographs I'll put them up. The model as it's name suggests was based on a waterfall, with a single track running under the mountain end of the layout through to a double track as it passed some private property and a riverside walk, there was no station, just a halt and a scenic location.
I had incorporated cheap kits to keep the costs low, secondhand stuff made up much of basic layout and I progressed to buying new kits that took my fancy. My main point I tried to make when building the layout was to keep it fun and more viewable for the general public, (it was intended to be an exhibition layout).
As I am very tall I hated operating layouts that made me bend too much, so my layout was built for my hight, but this allowed the viewing public a better view of the layout, for some it was eye-level viewing. One member, Laurie, decided it was too tall for him and used a small step-ladder to view the layout, much to the amusement of us all - but the point is that model railways are always viewed from on high which, does not give the best view.
