LAYOUT: Sheepcroft

STUART DAVIES rose to the challenge of building a layout in ‘EM’ gauge, and what better way to start building something new than with a good rummage in a skip?

Stuart Davies rose to the challenge of building a layout in ‘EM’ gauge by rummaging around in a skip.

I’ll show you!’ It’s a mindset we’ve surely all been in at some point, so when long-term ‘OO’ modeller Stuart Davies was challenged at an exhibition to try his hand at building ‘EM’ track, he stepped up to the 18mm gauge footplate with determination. “I must admit,” explains Stuart: “I’ve had some comments regarding my previous layout ‘Drewry Lane’, such as ‘It’s a nice layout, but the Code 100 track could be improved.’” Stuart wasted little time in getting to work and acquired the baseboard from an unlikely source. “A few years ago, I found a skip full of MDF offcuts at a place where I was working. It was destined for landfill, so I made some enquiries and was told I could take whatever I wanted.” The search for a ready-made baseboard was intentional: “My woodworking skills are best described as… poor.” Stuart chuckles, “and that’s being kind - my friends are far less complimentary.”

TRUE BLUE

The layout is located somewhere in the South West, but is intentionally nonspecific. The era is set between the late 1960s and early ’70s, when Stuart was growing up. “I was in my teens then, discovering girls, motorbikes and beer,” he laughs. “My dad was a train driver, based in Weymouth, so I was brought up in a railway family. I’d go out spotting blue diesels and, as everyone

Embankments are cardboard formers covered in papier-mâché, followed by a covering of Woodland Scenics scatters and static grass.

Shrubs and bushes are sea moss covered in scatter. Some pieces have been airbrushed to provide tonal variation.