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Some modellers class themselves as ‘operators’ – those for whom the joy of running trains far outweighs the enjoyment of building. Other modellers see themselves as ‘builders’, primarily gaining enjoyment from the construction of a layout.

Kyle Humphries freely admits that he falls into the latter of these two categories and his Port Talbot-based ‘Furnace 5’ layout has already been sold, allowing him to start building his next project. But what drove Kyle to create his first layout and, what’s more, scratchbuild everything from the buildings to the locomotives?

“I’ve been modelling from a very young age, but this was my first ‘proper’ layout,” explains Kyle. “I grew up around the steelworks industry at Port Talbot, so it was only natural that it would form the basis for the model. I had one goal for my first layout: build something good enough to show at an exhibition or to be featured in a modelling magazine.” With a scenic section measuring just 3½ft and a 1ft fiddleyard, space was at a premium. However, for several reasons, this was exactly how Kyle wanted it.

“I had one goal for my first layout: build something good enough to show at an exhibition or to be featured in a modelling magazine”

“The problem I have with building layouts is that I get bored really quickly and have to move on to something else, so a small layout gave me a much higher chance of achieving completion. It also meant that I didn’t have to model as much of the vast expanse of Port Talbot steelworks. I believe, in its heyday, it was several miles from one side to the other. I got a tour of the plant with my Dad when the works learned about my layout and, even riding on one of the locomotives, it still took about 25 minutes to get from one side of the site to the other.

“My layout is set anywhere between the 1990s and the present day, but leans more towards the 1990s when Port Talbot had five blast furnaces. I was on the receiving end of a pleasant coincidence when I purchased an off-the-shelf industrial Gaugemaster backscene to wrap around the three sides of the boxed layout. It was only when I got it home and unrolled it that I stared at it and went ‘hang on, that looks familiar’. As it turns out I had a backscene of the Port Talbot works with the five furnaces as it was in the 1990s!”

START FROM SCRATCH

As many modellers know, building a depiction of a real location brings with it the need to scratchbuild, unless you are fortunate enough to model an area that a manufacturer has selected as the subject for a range of buildings. Kyle also found himself with another obstacle which most modellers don’t have to think about: getting locomotives and

5 Kyle didn’t have a clue what he wanted the layout to look like when he started – one of the reasons it took four attempts to complete some aspects of it! This was the first layout Kyle built and the blast tower is his favourite part. He found it a challenge to get it looking dominant enough to be believable, but not so big that it took up the whole scene and overpowered the rest of the layout.

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