Garn
Garn is a 009 scale micro layout. The main scenic board is just 1 metre by 14" deep and was constructed from 6mm MDF sheet . The track is PECO 009 'crazy track' with the points wired through small DPDT slide switches mounted on top of the board at the front. This is not as ludicrous as it sounds and after a while they blend into the whole.
The scenic base is paper mache over card formers covered with Woodlands Scenics ground foam, coffee, tea leaves and anything else that was to hand. The slab stone walls are 1mm x 4mm card blocks laid one at a time - which is as tedious as it sounds. Trees are constructed from Hebe twigs and Woodlands Scenics foliage mat.
Rolling stock is mainly kits or kit-bashes, largely from the Chivers and Meridian ranges with a few 'creations' of my own. They're all strung together with Greenwich couplings and painted with Humbrol acrylic paint.
As the period portrayed is the early thirties in rural Shropshire. There are few road vehicles - in fact there is only a single Merit bicycle behind the station. The inspiration for the scene was from photos of the Tal-y-llyn and Corris lines between the wars where there are hardly any people visible, let alone any road vehicles.
Garn was sold on and now resides in deepest Surrey. And yes, the photo below is a P.D. Hancock built locomotive from the Craig and Mertonford taking a guest turn on the layout.
Edge
Edge is a small 4mm scale 009 scale micro layout built purely to illustrate a book project. The design brief was to build a layout from the ground up using simple kits and scratch-built items for all buildings and rolling stock. The choice of design was what was though a novice could build within a reasonable amount of time with a small toolkit and limited space. The track layout from John Ahern's Gammon End was chosen as it is about as small as you can use without being unduly restrictive. The visual theme was an early 20th century light railway with a generous hat-tip to the Welshpool and Llanfair with the architectural styling.
The layout is now owned by Miles Bevan, and a full description of the build can be found in Narrow Gauge Modelling in Small Scales which is available from the usual book dealers.
Orne is an 009 scale micro layout built on an old redundant 43" x 10" baseboard, which was originally built for a 00 gauge test track and then morphed into a slice of what I thought a little Sussex-based narrow gauge light railway may have looked like. Combined with a small storage yard it sits on a standard trestle table on short legs for exhibition.
The track is standard Peco 009 Crazy track which is ballasted with a mix of ash, limestone chips and tea leaves. General scenery is papier mache over card formers covered with various ground-foam scatter material. The building are largely scratch built from Wills scenic sheet. The rolling stock is a work in progress, though I wanted to get away from the 'small welsh' vibe and have edged toward some middle sized vehicles.
Motive power is mainly small petrol or diesel prototypes which are built from kits or kit-bashed. The rolling stock follows a similar tack and is mostly from kits which have been altered in some way or from sets of combined kit parts.
Orne was sold on in 2020 and resides in Greater Manchester.