5 - The Gn15 Madness

After my efforts with 16mm I began to think about a bigger layout. The problem was that I don't have a lot of space, so I wondered how I could get more model into the space available. Somehow I stumbled across the Gn15 web site, and found that the type of models there were very appealing. I started to correspond with Steve Bennett of Pepper 7 Models and ended up joining the GnATTERbox forum in October 2007. In Gn15 the scale is rather elastic, but the prototype gauge is 15".

The only way from there on was downwards.

WOOD BROS

I went to Pewsey to visit MOMING 11 and met Steve Bennett and other Gn15 modellers, bought some bits, and came home determined to build a layout. The result was Wood Bros, a little industrial layout. It was a good exercise in getting to grips with the new scale - 1:22.5 in this case Volumes are much bigger as well as linear dimensions. I also tried new techniques of scenery building. The track plan was kept deliberately simple - just a U, later becoming a complete loop. Inevitably, some changes in the concept had to be made as the build progressed, but the final result was well received, both on the NGRM Forum and at Pewsey in 2013.

Details of Wood Bros are at sub-page 6.

WATTS'

My next layout continued the industrial theme, but was a bit more adventurous with the size and scenery. It was intended to be a mine set in rugged, rocky country. There was a scenic board built on an IKEA Lack shelf, and three more boards to make a loop around the back. Insulation foam - Celotex - was used to make cliffs around the scene, and an attempt was made to have the track set in a sloping landscape.The track plan was again kept simple - an oval with a passing loop at the mine entrance. This layout went to Pewsey in 2015, and was called Watts' Yawzes Mine.

Details of this build at at sub-page 5.

After indulging the industrial side of my imagination I came across the Heywood railways - Duffield Bank and Eaton Hall. They looked interesting, but it was the discovery that a firm called Smallbrook Studios made a kit of the main loco - 'Katie' - that I decided to build a layout of a minumum gauge railway - this was Sir Arthur Heywood's term for what he was making. The scale in this case was 1:24.

BERGER HALL 1900

My first Heywood layout was called Berger Hall - a 15" gauge railway set in a country estate. The baseboard was 3' x 2' , and I wanted to get three scenes around the mythical estate into this space. This was another interesting exercise in arranging backscenes, while the track plan was once again a simple oval. Part of the fun in building this layout was concocting a backstory, giving the figures I had adapted names based on fast food, and personalities with their own stories - the more scurrilous the better. The layout involved getting to grips with new things - grass, trees, steam locos - but the scenery was based again on Celotex, and the building s used brick paper for speed and simplicity.

The layout was well received, and appeared at Pewsey in 2017, NGS at Eastley and The National Model Railway Exhibition at Warley in 2018, and WIMRAIL in 2019.

Details of the build are at sub-page 2.

BERGER HALL 2020

As a follow-on to Berger Hall I started Berger Hall 2020, aka The Berger Hall Miniature Railway. This represents a revived Berger Hall Railway, now as a tourist attraction. This was partly to try out a new track plan, and to enable some of the bigger locos I've constructed in the last two or three years somewhere to tun - the original Berger Hall has 6" curves and tight clearances. The build was in two parts. Firstly, a revamped Stable Yard, the terminus of the railway, and site of it's three road loco shed. It uses a photo of the stable block of Berger Hall as it's backscene, which proved remarkably effective, having a 3D effect even though resolutely 2D.

In this form the layout was exhibited at MOMING 19, with a traversing, rotating fiddle yard. Then the second phase took place, with two scenic boards joined onto Stable Yard, to give a run through the estate before the single line disappears into woods and onto a revamped, double-traversing, rotating fiddle yard. Once again the scenes needed grass and trees, although the land form is much gentler than before.

Details of the build are at sub-page 7.

Page created 9 Jun 2011 Last edited 1 January 2021