Layout: Broxfield
Time and space are two luxuries Roger Lattimore had in abundance. And since it’s been ten years since Model Rail visited ‘Broxfield’, we decided to see what’s changed.
Roger Lattimore has changed a lot on ‘Broxfield’ in the last decade. We visit it again.
Long term readers of Model Rail may remember Roger Lattimore’s ‘OO’ gauge ‘Broxfield’ layout from our November 2012 issue but, as with all long-term projects, there was still a lot of work to be done. Now, almost a decade later, we’ve returned to see how he’s turned that great idea into a finished work of art.
For those of you who don’t recall our first visit to this little slice of Hertfordshire, let us to take you back to where it all began for Roger as an adventurous four-year-old.
“My interest in railways began in November 1954 when I was given a tricycle for my birthday. My parents quickly realised that they couldn’t get me off it! Of course, it was different in those days, when kids would go out in the morning and would spend the whole day outside before arriving for tea in the evening. I remember my mum would pack some sandwiches for me and off I’d go. I never travelled very far as the goods yard near Ware was only half a mile away. Eventually they took the tricycle off me, but the pull of the railway that I experienced would stay with me my entire life, and would show itself in the model railway I’ve created.”
‘Broxfield’ is Roger’s fictional combination of Broxbourne and Hatfield and lives in his purpose built 36ft by 12ft railway room in his garden. The layout consists of a four-track main line, a single platform branch line station and a single track branch to Buntingford. There’s also a junction, goods shed and turntable, the resulting track plan is quite complicated.
“Ware is situated on the A10, which was the original Great North Road and so when the East Coast Main Line was at the planning stage it was on the original route. The landowners, however, forced it to go west to Hatfield instead. This has allowed me to justify a ‘what might have been’ layout through Ware. Sadly the single-line branch to Buntingford was removed, but all of the places from my childhood, Ware, Broxbourne, Hertford East, Rye House and
“All of the places from my childhood are firmly etched in my mind and I’ve tried to feature as much about them as possible on my layout”
St Margaret’s, are firmly etched in my mind and I’ve tried to feature as much about these places as possible on my layout.”
DEDICATED ROOM
Roger is one of the lucky few who has a dedicated railway room in his garden, built to the exact size of his plans for ‘Broxfield’. Too eager to get the project started though, a 12ft by 3ft section was already in progress by the time the room was built.
“I had started on part of the layout in the living room, propping it up behind the settee. As soon as the room was finished it went straight in and I began building the rest to fit in with it. All of the track is finescale, but over the years I have upgraded some of the track and points (particularly on the countryside side of the layout) to bullhead track, which looks so much better. Credit must go to the designers for making the new points exactly the same size as the existing ones, as it did make changing them over very simple!”
To get the track plan, which has remained unchanged since it was first installed, Roger went to St Denys and stood on the footbridge overlooking the track. From here he was able to look down and get an idea of the track configuration.
“I had to make some fictional sections to get the track to do everything I wanted it to, and to be as complicated as I wanted. For me, the hobby has to be complicated, and that’s why I’ve resisted the temptation to go with DCC, instead using a 48-lever signal box to isolate and override tracks as required for smooth operation.
“Having so many levers required a huge signal box and, fortunately, that allowed me to indulge in my favourite part of the hobby – kitbashing. There are so
“I’ve placed all of the ‘HO’ scale models at the back of the layout and in groups to give a subtle sense of perspective”
many great kits on the market at the moment and they have really come on in the last ten years. I love adapting kits to suit my own needs. The signal box, for example, is five Metcalfe kits attached end to end to make one large box and the footbridge is two kits brought together to ensure that it spans the four tracks. I have had to be careful with some of the models though as they are in ‘HO’ scale and are smaller than the British standard ‘OO’ gauge. To combat this problem, I’ve placed all of the ‘HO’ scale models at the back of the layout and in groups to give a subtle sense of perspective and without one model standing out like a sore thumb.”
NEVER FINISHED
As many of us know, a model railway is never finished, particularly one as large as this. There is no doubt that the layout has progressed since our last visit, but Roger still hasn’t got the semaphore signals operational, as he had hoped.
“They aren’t operational, but I have built all of them from scratch and spent a long time making sure they’re in the right place. I have been to many exhibitions where the signals are all over the place, so I took the time to plan and build each one to be the perfect fit for each location. The biggest requirement I had for ‘Broxfield’ was that I wanted to be able to operate everything from a single, seated position, so I spent a long time taking apart and
reorganising the signal box to get all of the switches in optimal position. Not only does this mean that a running session can be a bit longer, but it looks more realistic to see the trains at eye level rather than from above, like an eye in the sky. That, coupled with building the kits and completing the scenery on the parts of the layout that weren’t completed at the last Model Rail visit, has taken up much of the last decade! Never mind, it’s a retirement project so if it takes me another decade to get everything completed, what does it matter?”
Roger has been able to work on ‘Broxfield’ for almost 20 years and is still finding things to improve as new products come out. We may not all have the same space available to us, but perhaps sometimes we forget about enjoying the hobby and rush to get our layout completed for the next exhibition, or because we want to watch our favourite train do circuits for hours on end. There’s a lot to be said for using model railways as stress relief, and if it takes you a few years to get trains running and then you continually improve on the layout for the next two decades, that’s a lot of relaxation for the money.