4 - 1991 - Baigent's Basin

Once we were settled back in our house in Suffolk I began to plan a new layout to develop the idea of putting the trains in an industrial setting. After having several end-to-end layouts I decided I wanted a continuous run, and came up with a track-plan based on a simple oval of track with sidings off both long sides. I wanted to include a canal into the scene, too.

For baseboards I took the 4 foot 3 inch x 1 foot boards from Banwy Valley Mk 3, joined them together by 1" boards 2 foot 6 inches long at the ends, with a 6 " board between them for the canal.

An overall view of the finished layout - Old Works to the left, New Works on the right, and the canal lock and basin down the centre. It's a good job I bought a lot of that Vollmer brick card back from Germany. The girder bridge is an Airfix kit, and the chimney is another German HO kit.

A view of the New Works Yard, with the scrap-heap in the foreground. The track was buried over the whole visible area. Some areas had card up to the rail tops, painted to look like concrete, some had the foam cobbles, and this area had lots of N-gauge ballast, in a variety of colours, covering the sleepers.

Looking across to the Old Yard. The industrial town backscene was meant for 00 gauge, but gave a feeling of distance. The nearest buildings were given a bit of a 3-D effect by cutting them out of a second sheet and mounting them on thick card.

A late addition to the scene was this adaptation of the Airfix crane, running on tracks which I had had the foresight to put in at an early stage. The grab bucket was a Lego item that my daughters had grown out of - at least, they never missed it.

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Baigent's Basin was featured in the NG&IRM Review Issue 18, and a follow-up article appeared in issue 30 - all the best photos I took of the layout appeared in these. I took the layout to two exhibitions - the 1995 7mmNGA AGM in Nottingham, and the 1996 Small & Delightful exhibition at Shepton Mallet. When I moved from Suffolk to Cardiff a couple of months after the Shepton Mallet show I sold the layout - it was handed over to the purchaser at the motorway service station at the English end of the old Severn Bridge. Most of the stock went with it, but I kept the Muir-Hill and the crane wagons.

This was the end of my modelling in 7mm. Things could only get bigger.

Page created 21 May 2011 Last edited 21 June 2011