Peco Rail 200: Let's All Go to the Model Village

Time to set out my stall for the Peco Rail 200 competition.  Well actually, I posted this on RMWeb, and needed to post it here too back in May, but then I got sucked into another big project, of which more in a future post. He threatens. Anyway; I’m a sucker for building a micro layout, and when I heard about this competition I thought it would give me a good project for the summer.

The board arrived nice and quickly, and is rather impressive.  Decent size, and nice thick wood.  I wanted something a bit fun, colourful, and perhaps a little silly. I also liked the idea of an entire railway (to make this effectively a self-contained, functional micro layout). 

One thing I thought of then, was a return -yet again- to my fictional Port Eden seaside resort, and a miniature railway. Port Eden has been rearing its head in my projects as a setting, off and on, since about 2006. Generally set in the 1990’s and drawing on my memories of places like Barmouth or Tenby when I was a child, Port Eden is meant to be somewhere in Western Cumbria, down at the Atomic Seaside end of the coast, south of Workington.

 

I figured a miniature railway would allow for the tight curves, but large-scale figures to allow the cramming-in of a lot of detail in a relatively small space. I’ve done this repeatedly in the past, once with 00 trains, and twice with TT/3mm stock. The 1/32nd Cakebox iteration of the miniature railway is the one above, and I figured the tight curves of one of those ‘railway in a tin’ type sets would quite easily fit the Peco board.

The next take on Port Eden after the Cakebox used much larger figures (yes, almost exclusively Dr.Who, raided from Younger Child's toybox. There’s clearly a weird multi-Doctor, multi-Companion special episode where they go to the beach in Western Cumbria instead of fighting Daleks).

The most recent iteration of Port Eden in 00, produced for (and winning) a competition for Hornby a couple of years back.

A comparison of the figure sizes, done when I started the Hornby competition. Included here because of the thoughts around the heights of figures. If I wanted to use the Dr.Who size figures this time, the height restrictions of the Peco competition would be a bit too limiting, it could at best be a diorama.

I definitely wanted a working railway, so I thought I'd be back into G-sized figures (as I went for with the Hornby competition in the end). There's some quite highly detailed figures available from some of the German manufacturers, and I thought a few of them would be better than lots of the cheaper, slightly naff figures you can get through the likes of eBay.

At this point, whilst hunting for photographs of that project, another idea reared its head... The version of the Port Eden Miniature Railway which ended up with the Dr.Who figures started life as this; a competition entry which was never completed. 

There was just a bit too much going on; a miniature railway running through a Model Village. At this point then for the Rail200 build, I decided to drop the miniature railway altogether, and focus on the model village itself as a setting for this competition layout.

This won't be the first time I've modelled a model village either; when I was at Uni in 2006, I did a whole project on a fake model village tourist attraction, but set in a "1984", "V for Vendetta" inspired dystopia- a bit of a contrast between chocolate-box villages and nostalgia, and the creeping authoritarianism of the mid-2000's (hah, glad the world got that out of it's system...). Anyway it was all a bit cliche and trite looking as a project, peering back on it from 20 years, but enjoyable in places. One of the scenes I did was the good old Model of the Model Village, Inside the Model Village which appears at real ones like Bourton on the Water. Built in a filebox, and using home-made buildings, upcycled toys and Z scale trains, I had my own little miniature dystopia inside a bigger miniature dystopia.

 

Anyway, this time for the Peco project, it's all going to be a bit happier and more colourful. What can I say, 40 year old me is more mature and less of a pretentious buffoon than 20 year old me was. And I love model villages, so this will be my chance to do something a bit more upbeat, inspired by a couple of my favourites.

The daddy of them all, Bekonscot. This does raise the question of scale again, mindyou. These custom-made trains run on G tracks, and are significantly underscale for the buildings around them (not that it's immediately obvious when you view it).

Then there's my favourite model village, Anglesey, as it was pre-Covid. The railway here was custom-built, more to scale with the surroundings.

I visited this place to document it for 'Garden Rail' magazine, and I loved it. Sadly the scale locomotives have been replaced by the regular old G scale Eurpoean-outline LGB trains on G track since, as the custom-made railway was decades old and failing. 

 

I'm stuck using Z tracks for this competition, simply because I have a ton of it in stock. It does leave me wondering what scale to do the figures though. Go large, and whilst the trains and buildings will be more to 'model village' scale, it will be a massively crammed-in scene.  But with the figures too small, the railway will look too much like miniature engineering rather than models.

Here's the initial plan anyway, and subject to my usual mission creep and changes. The track plan is a proper 'rabbit warren', of the sort which sets the hobby back decades. But then a model village feels like a good way to justify that sort of thing. The plan itself is based on one Arnold sold as a ready-made N layout back in the 1960's, minus any points. The layout doesn't need more than a single train whizzing endlessly round and round.

A quick concept pic of how I kind of want it too look; I think using mainly child figures (and only a couple at that) will help disguise how small the layout is, the compromise of not having to use tall adult figures.  It'll be set in a former walled garden to contain the scene (like the old Himley Model Village, the first such place I visited as a child). Z scale trains, home-made buildings, lots of greenery and bright colours. Enough signage to hint at the rest of the village off-scene, and the wider Port Eden tourist attraction. And an excuse to hide homages to things like "Hot Fuzz" (will there be a Big Cop in the Small Town?) and "Untitled Goose Game", which I've been playing recently with my Youngest.

 

Next job, the not inconsiderable task of finding where the box with the Z gauge track is, post house-move...

Garden Railway Saturday; Welsh Highland Railway Coach

Needing a passenger vehicle, and something quite large at that, as a test train, I turned to a favoured prototype.

During the Plague Years, we had a ride in this carriage on the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway, Porthmadog. At the time I was tempted to laser-cut one of my own, but in the end I purchased this kit (from the WHHR shop, on a later visit).

Nice multi-media kit.

Little bit fragile in places, but easy to mend.

Some lovely, good quality bits, like the bench.

Contrary to the instructions, some very nice white-metal castings to replace the laser-cut wooden parts.

Ready for painting; having constructed the coach mainly during my lunch breaks, and before shifts at work, I ended up painting it in Wales.

Bit limited in the choices of paint; it was Autumn when we were there, and naturally B&M had stripped out the spray paints in favour of more Halloween tat. Luckily I had the dregs of a can of black paint to prime it, then hand-painted the rest with tester pots.

A bit of an experiment with the roof, loo-roll soaked in  watered-down PVA.

A bit more modification to the kit, to portray open windows.

An attempt at my usual weathering technique, washes of Nuln Oil and watered-down acrylics, but the material drank it up. But then maybe it would make more sense for a carriage like this to be kept sparkling.

Photographed out in the garden at my parents house, as we still lack a garden railway... Still, as I type this, the plan is to shortly crack-on with it, weather depending...

...aaaaaand published.

Garden Railway Saturday; Fine and Dandy

The under-developement 32mm garden railway is planned to be set in the late 20th century, somewhere in Wales, and probably diesel hauled. So there really isn't a justification for a Ffestiniog Railway Horse Dandy Wagon. Yet, as soon as I saw this wagon in an issue of Garden Rail, I really wanted it. What can I say, I like an eccentric bit of rolling stock.

A Dandy Wagon is a specialist item of rolling stock, used in the days when the Ffestiniog ran their slate trains by gravity. Empty trains were hauled by horse up to the quarries, then the horse rode back to the seaside in a a special wagon attached to the back of the loaded trains.

This is a really nice wagon, it practically falls together.

Use of an engineers square, but the quality of the cutting is so good it doesn't really need it.

Bodywork assembled.

The chassis was an interesting design, brass tubes the axles sit within. It does mean the wagon rolls along very nicely.

Sprayed with a handy can of dark red.

The more I looked at it though, the more I thought I'd like to add some extra relief detailing, so broke out the spare rivets (stick on gems) leftover from the diesel shunter build.

Some dry grass used for the hay in the trough.

The horse is the right side, but the wrong breed and really needs some harness and tack. That said, the Schliech-branded toy is quite characterful, and they had this one on another stand at the Llangollen show so it was a handy purchase.

 

Garden Railway Saturday; Llangollen Show, 2025

Striking whilst the iron is hot, here's a post on the Llangollen Garden Railway Show today.

Love a streamliner. 

Where was I? Yes, Llangollen. So this is a show we've been attending for the last few years, and it's always worth the effort of attending.

By contrast to the more commercial G gauge items such as that rather tasty streamliner, here's a really rather nice Gauge 1 loco. more to scale, and a wonderful model.

Going high up the list of 'models seen at the show that I'd love to own, had I a bottomless bank account'.

There were plenty of the trade there, who we were wanting to shop with, and several impressively large layouts.

This is the other loco I wanted, "Little Wonder". I gather it's a detailed 'Boot Lane' kit.

This is the sort of modelling I like; the builders (a family group) have been scratchbuilding the characters from the Thomas series that Bachmann haven't produced so far; that BoCo is brilliant, I wanted to do a model of him back when we had a 45mm layout, but never got around to it.

Quirky, colourful, and huge, this beast of a layout really caught my eye. Inspired by the works of Roland Emmett.

Yep, this also struck a chord. I love that there's room in garden railway modelling for the silly...

...and the serious. I really, really like this Fairlie.

Lots of nice live-steam locomotives running, and loads for sale. Seriously tempting, had I the funds.

That leads to thoughts on the Trade there. We came away with lots of goodies, though definitely on the 'laser cut kits' end of the scale. Though we did treat ourselves to a 3D printed loco kit from Boot Lane Works, who seem to be cornering the market in competitively-priced locomotives. A selection of kits from the likes of Timpdon Models (retiring and having an 'everything must go sale', to my disappointment, as I love their kits), and a few more from other suppliers.

Catering was a bit busy (the poor weather meaning the inside seating was a bit crowded) so we strolled down to the Llangollen Railway station.

The 31 was waiting to depart as we got there, which at least meant the tearoom was quiet enough for a sit-down for lunch.

Quick reference shot, for one of the benches we bought at the show.

The show was good as ever, and nice to have a quick catch-up with Phil Parker, my editor at Garden Rail. Lots of goodies bought, and some lovely layouts seen.

Who knows, maybe next year, I'll buy that Double Fairle too...