Half Acre

Half Acre was built as the third layout construction article for Railway Modeller. Due to various Covid-generated supply problems, the desired (and requested) tail-chaser layout could not be attempted. Therefore some sideways thinking was brought into play and this scale reduction of an EM gauge layout called Elm Park was shamelessly ripped off and produced in N gauge. While this was not ideal and didn't fit the initial brief,  the upside was the increased amount of Peco/Ratio scenic items that could be included. The scenic area is 1,200 mm x 300mm with an accompanying fiddle yard of 900mm x 300mm all built on a substructure of White Rose ply baseboard kits.

The prototype is a supposed W. London branch under WR control in the late 1950s-mid 1960s and uses stock from the Farish and Dapol ranges.

The construction of the layout appeared in a three part series in the Oct-Dec 2022 issues of Railway Modeller and at the time of writing is being exhibited as part of the Peco product sales stand.

Images: Craig Tiley/David Clements/Peco studio