Part one.

Burnside, despite its Scottish name, is a freelance layout based in Southern England. It represents a terminus station with a branch line connection. The time is the 1950's and rolling stock from the grouping companies is still in evidence. A nearby factory complex sees daily deliveries of coal and materials with finished goods being transferred on the daily mixed goods service. The branch line sees regular railcar workings which cater for what is effectively two branches served by Burnside station. The station is the scene of some excitement at the moment as an important member of a wedding party seems to be having second thoughts. A lamb also seems to have wandered into forbidden areas.....

Burnside is 5 feet by 1 foot and requires one chair, one table and a three pin (square) socket 240v ac power supply. So says the exhibition flyer! Burnside took about nine months to build. The baseboard (the first I ever built) has a 2 x 1 inch frame with a 4 millimetre plywood top. The track is Peco finescale streamline laid on a cork base. I had hoped to cut down the noise by laying the track on cork, but once it was ballasted with granite and PVA glue the whole lot was so solid the cork base didn't seem to make much difference.

I used SEEP point motors and I had an enormous amount of trouble with the live frog switching on them. Initially I thought I had a short somewhere in the layout and I spent hours putting in another section to no avail. I eventually discovered that the washer on the motor which carries the current when the motor is operated had some sort of coating on it. Half an hour's laborious scraping with a screwdriver sorted the problem out and I've had no further problems since then (some three years ago). I have since been told that this was a known problem with the old SEEP motors and that the fault has been cured on the new version now being sold. How true that is I don't know, but if you are experiencing the same problem have a bash with a screwdriver!

The basic scenery is lightweight ceiling tiles stuck together with PVA and covered with Polyfilla substitute (cheaper). Loads of Woodland scenics on top to hide the fact that I forgot to put any dark paint in the mix to hide the awful whiteness. The platform is old Hornby/Minitrix that I had lying around, hence the regular gaps. The buildings are Ratio built and painted by Nigel Harvey. The signal box has a fully detailed interior and possesses almost enough levers for Kings Cross. Nigel is now heavily into dolls houses which probably explains it.

The section switches are simple on/off although those for the four fiddle yard tracks are DPDT. The control is by an Orbit supertroller which is fed from a separate box containing three transformers supplying the traction current and power for the capacitor discharge unit.
There are quite a few figures on the layout, including a bride who is crying with her mum beside the station building and the bridegroom on the station platform. When asked I usually say that he's gone trainspotting, but occasionally I will just point significantly to the two ladies each pushing a pram towards the station building.

Rolling stock is mainly RTR, but I have constructed a parcels railcar using an old Langley kit and a very smooth running Lifelike GP40 chassis. I also run a repainted warship, although the best slow running loco on the layout is a second hand Graham Farish green Class 20 which I have weathered a bit.
Electro magnets have been installed for automatic uncoupling, but that's as far as it's gone since just as I started experimenting with couplings I got involved with 0 gauge. I'm in the middle of building a portable 0 gauge Metropolitan layout called "Studley Wood" and that has been taking up a lot of time recently. I'm also building an 0 gauge garden railway and having built and installed 72 feet of baseboard I've only got another 84 feet to go….

May 2009. Martin has written an update to this page, click here to view part two.