Coley is an area of Reading that had a goods yard from May 1908 until closure in July 1983. It was connected to the main lines at Southcote Junction, one mile to the south of Reading West station. The layout supposes that the area developed a small industrial site with a factory and a brewery. The London & South Western Railway built more sidings, a goods shed and Coley Park Station, a small terminus for local workers and residents. Later on the Esso Petroleum Company built an oil storage facility on the site. After nationalisation, Coley Park engine shed was allocated the shed code '70K'. About this time, Coley Park began to see an increase in 'foreign' locomotives visiting the depot from the Midland and Eastern regions. These would have been from inter-regional freight workings to Reading and cross-country passenger train services.

Over the years steam gave way to diesel; after years of neglect the engine shed was rebuilt in 1970. Due to the rise of the preservation movement, however, the coaling stage enjoys a new lease of life servicing steam locomotives used for main line running. With a few subtle changes, the layout can be portrayed either as the 1960s with steam locomotives and green diesels, or the 1970s/80s, with diesel locos carrying some of the various liveries of the 'modern image' period.

The model is built to 2mm Scale Association standards using code 40 rail. This is a finescale version of N gauge with 9.42mm gauge track, as opposed to the 9mm used by 'N' gauge, and is built with very fine clearances. The rolling stock has been built either from scratch, from kits, or are re-wheeled proprietary items; the majority of the buildings are by Metcalfe, Ratio, Kestrel and Knightwing.

This little model represents a fictional railway and port on the northern Spanish coast at a time near the end of the steam era. There is a large amount of industrial and railway activity in this part of the world all set in the beautiful Cordillera and the mountains, which tend to separate it from the rest of Spain.

The scenery and buildings are scratchbuilt and were modelled from actual structures in Asturias, an area known as 'Green Spain'. German and British locomotives and rolling stock were much in evidence during the steam era in this part of the world, so the Märklin German outline models are not out of place here.

'The Surf Line' is the name given to the stretch of railroad that runs one hundred miles from San Diego up through Los Angeles to Santa Barbara in the USA; its name is due to a large part of the route hugging the coastline. Amtrak passenger trains run twice a day and continue north of Santa Barbara, one of these is the 'Coast Starlight' which travels between Los Angeles and Seattle. The scenery along this route is generally breathtaking except for the built up area of Los Angeles, which is typical American sprawl.

The stretch of line north of Los Angeles is owned by Southern Pacific (now part of Union Pacific), while to San Diego in the south it is owned by Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

The layout is based on the northern part of the route and in particular the area around Santa Barbara as this town is attractive and compact by American standards. The Amtrak station is in the town and very close to the beach. As the layout is circular the station at Santa Barbara has not been modelled, therefore a fictitious location somewhere nearby was chosen.

The layout is fully sceniced all the way round, featuring the station area next to the beach and town, a single track section following the coastline and a yard where local freight trains can be seen being switched to various small industries. The fiddle yard runs round the inside of the layout and can accommodate fairly lengthy trains such as those with double stack containers.

Peco finescale track has been used throughout using SEEP solenoids for the turnouts. Buildings are a mixture of kit and scratchbuilt structures whilst the trees, including the large number of palm trees as per Santa Barbara, come from various sources. Rolling stock and locomotives have been detailed and are from a number of manufacturers such as Kato, Atlas, Roundhouse and Microtrains.

City Road (LT) is model of a London Transport line showing a section of route partly underground. The model is set in 1960 and represents an imaginary Metropolitan Line terminus. A small depot is sandwiched between the Metropolitan Line curving away at the rear and a steep connection in the foreground down to the Northern Line.

On London Transport there are two structure gauges; the Metropolitan is a 'surface' line (roughly the same size as British Railways) while the Northern is a smaller 'tube' line. Passenger services are run by multiple units while pannier tanks (bought second-hand from BR) and battery locomotives haul engineering trains; BR condensing locomotives are in charge of steam suburban trains to the main lines and other BR locos arrive with freight trains.

The layout is 15 feet long, built in two lightweight modules of 3mm plywood. This makes for easy transportation with the box cross-sections providing considerable strength. We shall be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

This layout represents a small metre gauge terminus somewhere in the centre-west of France. It is the 1950s and small economique railways such as these are hanging on to their existence, but the dreaded motor car will see most of these lines closed over the next ten years. Steam is now only used for occasional freight services as tiny red and cream railcars have taken over the passenger duties.

The model has taken six months to build and uses handmade track to 12mm gauge. The railcars are by Mougel and mounted on re-gauged N Gauge chassis. Stock is mainly handmade or converted Bemo and Tillig models.

The branch line to Hayling, near Portsmouth, was well known for its little trains; it closed in 1962. As I had already built an 00 model layout, I thought of the branch line in N gauge as a challenge.

The trees are made out of grape stalks and the fencing is made of matchsticks, the wire being the strands from loudspeaker cable. The buses are Lesney and Matchbox, repainted from red to Southern green and primrose. All the buildings are made out of cereal boxes with Perspex for the glass. Don't be afraid to ask any questions.

This layout depicts a small corner of a fictitious iron and steel works in Bristol in the early 1970s. Iron Mould Lane runs through the works with the overhead pipe bridges and conveyors crossing to other parts of the site. Most of the large buildings are scratchbuilt from plasticard on plywood shells although the blast furnace itself is a modified Walthers kit.

Rail traffic varies from the torpedo wagons carrying the molten iron from the blast furnace cast house, to the crucible wagons with slag for the tip. There are also the Works Engineer's wagons for internal use and British Railway stock delivering equipment, etc. into the Engineer's yard. Steam locomotives are continually coming on and off shed for duties in other parts of the works, with diesels appearing for fuel at the refuelling point nearby. Who knows, you may see the occasional enthusiasts brake van tour around the works in order to catch the last wisps of industrial steam.

Konigsfeld ('Kings Field') is set in Austria. The village is only reached by a long narrow road, so a railway connects with the standard gauge main line further down the valley in order to carry agricultural produce and timber. The restricted road access created an ideal situation for a private railway company to prosper. An added bonus is the carriage of tourists to visit the ruined castle and fine walking country that today makes up the majority of the railway's passenger traffic. Mixed trains are the most common, interspersed with timber traffic coming from the off stage forest branch, running into the station to allow the locomotives to run round before proceeding down the valley.

Rolling stock is weathered and modified Fleischmann 'Magic Train' items. Although sold as toys, these locomotives are highly detailed models of preserved engines found on the Murtalbahn in Austria. Carriages and goods wagons are also fair representations of those running in Austria. The couplings have been replaced and the balconies widened as appropriate.

The County Donegal Railway was a 3ft gauge line which served the far north of Eire, it closed at the end of 1959. This layout represents the station at Letterkenny as it was in the 1940s and 50s. A full range of the railway's rolling stock can be seen from the impressive 2-6-4 tanks to the distinctive pioneering railcar fleet.

Manafon Mills represents a might-have-been Welsh branchline that left the Oswestry & Newtown Railway (later a part of the Cambrian Railways) at Forden in Montgomeryshire. It followed the valley of the River Rhiw to a couple of quarries and a lead mine. A passenger service was run as far as Manafon Mills, with the line continuing for mineral traffic only. We operate the layout as it was in the late 20s when the GWR had absorbed the branch from the Cambrian. Please ask us if you have any questions although, since it is an imaginary layout, you must not be surprised if we make up the answers!

This layout is constructed on ten 2ft x 4ft boards and features a busy station with two 8ft long platforms. Behind the station on the upper level there is a working tram which runs in front of a busy town and an open air market. On one side there is a canal, which goes over the track leading to a wooded area, and on the other side there is a coal yard and a small factory. To achieve the rural look there are over 100 hand built trees. The layout has a continuous main line for maximum action.

I have tried to create the feeling of a compact industrial area served by a light railway in Govan, a suburb of Glasgow on the River Clyde. The period modelled is the 1950s when the line was busy and before the traffic declined in the 1960s; the line finally closed in the 1970s. The reclaimed site was used as part of the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival.

The layout is freelance and depicts a narrow gauge line which assumes that preservation started earlier than in reality.

Netherhouses was just a rural area in the North of England until quarrying started in the middle of the nineteenth century. A village grew up to serve these workings and at around the same time a railway was constructed to provide transport for the local area. Later in the century the LNWR built a branchline through Grue Moor and, although there had been a canal for some years, it was only then thought viable to connect the two places. This involved considerable costs including the construction of a large viaduct at Netherhouses. The line enjoyed mixed fortunes but has now been restored to pristine condition thanks to the efforts of its associated preservation society.

On show will be the 00n9 working crane as seen in the Railway Modeller for May 1997.

It is a year or so since the Berlin Wall has fallen. To celebrate their freedom and access to the West, the local branch of railway enthusiasts (EisenbahnFreunde) have organised a DieselLokFest. This gives a chance to run the various private and Museumslok engines on service trains in the Neuburg area. This station is not the only one in the town but being near to the main loco facility and Metropa servicing plant has the widest variety of trains. Portions of the trains to the rest of Germany carry on through to the Heumarkt station. The main expresses actually departing from the nearby Neuburg Garten station. The cross country and branch trains will see most of the special engines although many trains will be worked by usual power.

Now for the reality: the stock was all manufactured by the firm Berlinerbahn, now Tillig. The collection of locomotives is made up from those that were available and liked by the builder. If you have any questions about the layout, German modelling or the Wealden Railway Group, do please ask the operator.

Rue-sur-Mer is at the end of a short branch on the La Société Anonyme Des Chemins de Fer d'Intérêt Local de la Baie de Maye. This French light railway ran north east for 10.5 km from Le Champ Neuf to a junction with the main line at Flandre, with passenger trains running a further 5 km to Rue. In the process the main line served Here, Froise, and Le Bout des Crocs. A branch ran 2.5 km north-west from Marquenterre Junction via St. Quentin en Tourmont to a temporary terminus at Rue-sur-Mer, fated never to be extended to Quend-Plage-Les-Pins. Most trains do not terminate at Rue-sur-Mer but continue to either end of the line. Trains to Flandre are pushed from Marquenterre Junction to Rue-sur-Mer and those to Le Champ Neuf are pushed from Rue-sur-Mer to Marquenterre Junction. Given the way the branch is operated, and its rather doubtful financial prospects, costs have been minimised with limited station facilities and no unnecessary loop.

It's summer 1962. High on the hillside above the village of Cromford in Derbyshire, a faint plume of smoke rises above the skyline as a small tank engine passes Black Rocks, running bunker first with a mixed rake of empty water tenders and full mineral wagons with limestone from Killers Quarry at Middleton. The train's destination is Sheep Pasture Top, head of the incline down to the eastern end of the line at Cromford Wharf.

On arrival, the locomotive runs round its train and propels it towards the top of the 1 in 8 Sheep Pasture Incline. Once over the small hump opposite the site of the single-road corrugated-iron engine shed (blown down in a gale earlier in the year), the brakes are pinned to bring the train to a gradual halt short of the incline head. The first two wagons are uncoupled and nudged forward to rest against the scotch blocks at the brow or the incline. Here they are attached with chains to the incline cable by the 'hanger-on', prior to their cautious descent to Cromford Wharf.

The locomotive is uncoupled and drifts back to the crossover adjacent to the two reservoirs then sets back alongside the water tank.. Here the engine is left to simmer gently in the afternoon sunshine as the crew lift the lid of the water filler, insert the 'bag' from the water column and replenish the saddle tank from the old cylindrical boiler. This is built on brick columns, situated outside the shed - the High Peak's version of the familiar water tower.

This is an imaginary but representative station on a light branch line in Denmark. Pronounced 'shels-be-air', the name means 'soul's mountain', the name being derived from the presence of an ancient burial mound on a prominent hill. There were many branch lines in Denmark, some of which are still privately operated today.

The layout operates typical trains from the Danish State Railway (DSB) and some private railways. Although the grain silo may be a modern addition to the district these were constructed from as early as the 1930's, so the scene is a nearly timeless one and can portray the railways as they were for over half a century. The railway would have been built at the turn of the century but the long siding would have been added at a later date to reach the new silo. It should be noted that the goods loop is simply a double-ended siding and cannot be used to pass trains. Goods trains working at Sjælsbjerg, therefore have to shunt the sidings in-between the sparse passenger service.

If you have any questions, do ask; if you are interested in any of the railways of Scandinavia, why not join the Scandinavian Railways Society? Write to John Clark, 17 Beckett Close, Basingstoke, England RG23 8HS.

Although not built to any particular prototype, this layout is based on the 1ft 111/2in gauge railways in North Wales. Between 1920 and 1950 most of the narrow gauge lines closed because of competition from the ever growing road transport systems, but then the preservation movement was emerging and many derelict lines were resurrected and given a new lease of life. They are probably more popular now than when they were first built!

The layout is 9'x 2' and is built in three sections, each 3' x 2' on 2" x 1" open frameworks - I wanted the railway to run through the scenery rather than on the scene. An unusual feature of the layout is that dimming down the overhead lights and switching on the station and cottage lights can produce a night scene. There is a bonfire with a flickering flame in the garden and even stars in the sky!

I was very pleased to have the layout published in the Railway Modeller December 1998. We are very friendly people so please ask us any questions about the layout and we will do our best to answer them.

Yatcombe is the terminus of a single line branch in Dorset operated by the Southern Region of British Railways in the 1960. A wide variety of SR motive power is permitted to work the branch; locomotives used are a mixture of modified Tri-ang and white metal kits from BEC, GEM, 3SMR and 3mm Society; most still use the old reliable Tri-ang mechanism. Rolling stock has a wide variety of origins and includes a number of scratchbuilt freight wagons.

Trackwork is the 3mm Society product with hand built copper-clad pointwork using flat bottom code 80 rail. The track is laid onto cork and ballasted with fine N gauge granite chippings. Points are operated manually using the wire-in-tube method controlled using DPDT centre-off slide switches. All buildings and structures are scratchbuilt using a combination of card, plasticard and balsa wood.

The layout is set in the late 1930s and a number of liberties have been taken in building the layout, not least the track gauge. Geoff Bishop, the layout owner, could not have contemplated building the line in 0n3, (0 Scale with 3ft gauge track), due to the high cost of models, but the relatively inexpensive Bachmann 0n30 range, (a scale gauge of 2ft 6in), has enabled Geoff to model narrow gauge in 0 scale.

Other liberties with the truth are the operation of passenger trains and a level of freight train service the Colorado & Southern (C&S) could only dream about.

As the real C&S at Idaho Springs was spread over some distance, no attempt has been made to copy the track layout. Many of the buildings on the layout are modelled after originals from the area, though selectively compressed and not necessarily in the correct positions.

Shaw Bridge is an imaginary single track branchline of the ex-Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway. The layout is based around the late 1920s, this way we can run LYR and post-1923 London Midland & Scottish Railway liveries together.

The trackwork is handbuilt using C&L components to give a realistic look. The points are operated via the wire and tube method, a simple but effective operation method.

The buildings depict LYR prototypes. All the rolling stock would be familiar in the area and are mainly kit built with some scratchbuilt items. It uses the Sprat and Winkle hook and bar with permanent magnets strategically placed. The locomotives have beam compensation, which aids slow running a must for reliability on a small layout.

At present there are very few signals, though a signalling programme is well under way. A two hour sequence keeps the layout running smoothly.

If you have any questions please ask us.

It is around the year 1930, and somewhere in the fictional French department of Jadis is to be found the Compagnie des Tramways de Meaune. The Compagnie runs a ‘voie de soixante’ (600mm gauge) steam tramway along the roadsides and through the streets of the villages and towns of the region. One of these towns is St Pierre which is provided with several tram stops including a cramped canal-side terminus.

This layout uses the scale of 9mm to the foot (1:34) on 16.5mm track to represent a narrow gauge railway. This results in a model that is a scale 41 mm under gauge whilst allowing the convenience of using a variety of ‘00’ and ‘H0’ components. The rolling stock is economically built from styrene sheet on Hornby chassis, and the locomotives similarly constructed on mechanisms from Hornby, Fleischmann and Mehano. Trackwork is Peco ‘00’ code 100 buried in a roadway of Das modelling clay.

Most of the buildings are built from 6mm-thick foamboard, mounting board off cuts, Das modelling clay, and styrene. The exceptions are the premises of Cousyn et Cie, Lucas et Fils, and the building on the south-west corner of the station yard; these are adapted from the well known Heljan 0 scale loco shed kit and the same source also provides the windows for the brewery.

No excuse is offered, or indeed felt necessary, that the track height is 1420mm above the floor; it is firmly believed that railway modelling is a serious adult art form and should be displayed as such.

Articles can be found in: Voie Libre October 1999 [No. 9], Continental Modeller October 1995, January, July, October 1997, January, April 1998, March, June, October 1999, September 2000; Rail Magazine (Dutch language) September 1999 [No. 167].