Hornby Magazine - inspiring layout design...

York, Leeds or King’s Cross?

The East Coast Main Line is one of the most loved in Britain, with its mix of glamorous express trains, heavy freight, and pottering local trains. ANTHONY NEW offers some suggestions for how to create authentic East Coast atmosphere at home.

With its history of Great Northern ‘Atlantics’, ‘A1’, ‘A3’ and ‘A4’ steam locomotives, Deltic diesels, High Speed Trains, and today’s Class 91 electrics, the ex-LNER East Coast Main Line has provided inspiration to generations of railway modellers. But how can you capture this epic railway route in a model railway?

One answer is to pick a favourite piece of the line and model it along one side of a room as in Plan 1, running the track around the other side into a set of storage loops. Layouts of this type are ideal for watching the trains go by and the key features are a length of high-speed main line, some interesting scenery, and perhaps a loop or two to hold slow freights while expresses rush past.

The scene could be anything from Welwyn viaduct to the Durham hills or perhaps even Stoke Summit as shown here, inspired by the excellent Wolverhampton MRC layout which delighted exhibition visitors a few years ago. Now, the Wolverhampton club’s layout was around 30ft long, but Plan 1 will easily fit an 8ft x 11ft room. In a home setting, however, the scope for operation is very limited and eventually boredom may set in.

Modelling a small country station, as many modellers like to do, is certainly one answer, but as most trains would run straight through it isn’t necessarily a huge improvement. I would rather turn the hidden storage into a large city station instead and get a lot more railway to operate.

For the full story see HM April 2008 p24-29.