Safton

Builder: Peter Moore Issue it appeared in: MR3 Summer 1998 Chosen by: Richard Foster, Editor

‘Layouts that never leave home’: it was a snappy title and one of the key reasons that I chose to buy Model Rail over the competition. The layouts found in people’s lofts, spare rooms and garages were just so different to those featured elsewhere. It felt almost brave to feature the northern grit of ‘Tetleys Mills’, or the compressed main line of ‘Llandudno Junction’. Peter Moore’s ‘Safton’ epitomised this bravery, for it featured toy trains as well as a model railway. Peter’s layout was quite ingenious: he could switch eras between LNER pre-war splendour and post-war Eastern Region excitement. These trains ran on a simple yet effective landscape, a proper model railway if you will. But on the inside of this 8ft by 4ft loop he had a Trix Twin system, crude three-rail track and simple tinplate buildings. The two should never have gone together and yet, like chilli and chocolate, they did. This was only issue three and I was hooked.