Some of you will have seen a couple of posters advertising a OO gauge layout for sale. A few will have seen the layout at either Banbury in 1996 or Derby in 1997, this layout was "Melbridge Town", a train set that we abandoned before it's prime. You may well ask "Why ?". This is an attempt to answer as well a a moral tale for anyone contemplating their first real layout.

The story starts with "Melbridge Dock". You might have seen it, nine feet long with buildings as big as a house. It's been up and down the country, appeared at shows big and small. In exhibition layout terms I think it warrants the description "success". Around three years ago we were thinking of building another layout and the idea of a roundy roundy appealed - there were a couple of nice ones on the circuit. What we wanted was to be able to run trains round in circles and do some shunting. Much was to be learned from the dock - the layout had to fit in the back of an Escort van, would use the same construction techniques and much of the same stock. One of the thoughts was that during the time that a hire van was required for the dock, exhibition managers were getting a rather high "pound per foot" ratio from our expense claims and we wanted to improve this. Anyway, on the train back from Manchester one year, I was reading the Model Railway Journal (and me a OO modeller too !) the plan by Barry Norman was of one of the Nottingham suburban stations, it was small (ish) and had loops at the back for a Brickwork's, ideal we both thought.

Calculations at home ended up with a plan for an eighteen foot long layout with a twelve foot scenic section. 3 foot radius curves at the end meant that the overall layout would not be too enormous but would have plenty of room for a long fiddle yard. Baseboards were built and Trackwork started. All the point formations were built as units on the bench and tested before being fixed to the cork which topped the plywood boards. There were no major problems, indeed the track looked very impressive. Unfortunately the boards were less than perfect. Whilst the Dock boards had been cut by those nice people at Do it All, much of the wood this time was cut by hand, which combined with hurried construction made for gaps between boards, not big 'uns but not perfect, still, we persevered. The Trackwork was completed and wired in the same manner as the Dock. It all seemed to work although the wiring took forever. Final testing was done with the boards assembled in the spare room. At this point there was no fiddle yard or curve boards.

Scenery was to be minimal, the station was set down in a hole, surrounded by retaining walls. I took the plunge a built these, basing the design on a card kit but scratch built from Daler board & plasticard. Eighteen feet or wall takes a long time to build and is hardly the most stimulating thing to do so some buildings were built to sit in front. The station, which was to be on a separate board above the track, had started to take shape and the platforms even appeared in Railway Modeller.

Unfortunately it became apparent that the date of the debut show of November '95 (which had been gained by some arm twisting) was far too ambitious. Eighteen months work was nowhere near enough to get this project into shape, an apologetic letter was sent, although the substitution of the Dock helped out on the day. In this manner, things continued. After another nine months, we took the scenic boards, a pile of wood and some Peco track down to the club. In the back room we built the end boards and fiddle yard. A day and a half of hard work later and we had the big train set we had envisaged at the start of the project. Scenically we were getting there although the tramway running along the backscene was not in sight.

Banbury 96 and the general public were exposed to "Melbridge Town" for the first time. There was a rudimentary street scene, non sliding traverser (the track was soldered across it for reliability) and no lights. Despite this, trains ran around all day and despite funny comments from the neighbouring German Railway Society layout, the public seemed to enjoy it. We survived and had a list of improvements in mid before the next show.

Needless to say, nothing got done for the next few months while the Dock was refurbished in time for the Doncaster show. This left a couple of moths before Derby. At this point though, feelings of dissatisfaction with the layout finally came to a head and it was decided to make Derby it's last show. In an effort to recoup some of the material costs the posters to advertise it for sale were produced to be used at the York show. A couple of people were interested and one of them even visited us a week later but the fact that none of his locos would go around a 48' inch curve scuppered that sale.

Derby loomed, consideration was given to crying off but it was really too late for that and so with some improvements since Banbury, we went. Now the IRA closing the road system on the night we were to travel didn't help matters but by opening time on Saturday morning we were ready. The fiddle yard still didn't slide but the street scene looked nice and there were a couple of new loco's. One or two wiring problems raised their ugly head but trains ran and there was some shunting. We turned down one booking and had two offers to buy it - there weren't even any adverts as we'd decided to scrap it as selling was too much work. One of these has since come good and hopefully by the time you read this, the train set will have a new owner.

So, the moral ? It goes something like this-

1. Everything will take two to three times as long as you think it will even when you think it won't. Oh yes it will.

2. Don't build anything so big it can't stay set up for most of the time, you can't play with it, so you don't find all the faults.

3. Consider transport, you will have to carry it all in and out of a show on your own so the less trips the better. Our scenic boards packed down OK but the fiddle yard and curves (plus legs) were a real bind.

4. People with proper power tools make better baseboards than people without (Note: A jigsaw is not a proper tool in this sense).

5. The layout you want to watch is not necessarily the one that is most fun to build.

6. When it stops being fun, stop doing it. It is a HOBBY !

Although much of this has been pessimistic, we did get a lot right. The track work was very good, the buildings nice (even that retaining wall looked OK) and the street scene was very effective. Basically, we did it. In three years we built a medium size layout that worked. Now it is back to LITTLE layouts.

There is of course the small matter or over fifty wagons kits awaiting building and some big loco's to detail - they'll still get done eventually. The buildings in the street scene have not been sold and will appear in another project so it hasn't all been wasted. The purpose of this article however, is to impart some of that experience we gained during the project, which might save anyone else making the same mistakes.