Layout: Paybury
What started as a layout to occupy his hours in lockdown now means Jonnie Pay is in a race against time to finish it before its exhibition debut.
Jonnie Pay was in a race against time to get his lockdown project ready for its first show.
Did anybody else find themselves getting rather bored during lockdown? Many of us passed the time watching documentaries about an exotic man and his tigers, or found ourselves following slightly strange dance trends on social media. Others, like Jonnie Pay, used the time more constructively. When he concluded that he was just whiling away the hours, he decided that enough was enough and set to work building the Tim Horn baseboard that had been gathering dust in the corner, taking those first steps towards an exhibitionstandard Southern layout making its debut soon.
“Despite knowing the region I wanted to model, I still had to work out what I wanted the layout to depict and decide on a track plan. Fortunately, this task was made somewhat easier by the restrictive size of the baseboard and the points, of which I had three left and three right-hand turnouts. They look quite small in the packaging, but put them on a 6ft by 18in baseboard and all of a sudden you’ve lost a significant chunk! Each point is approximately ten inches long, so by the time I’d put a crossover in for the run around I’d lost almost two feet. On the plus side, it did mean I didn’t spend weeks planning a very large room-filler and could get straight on with the wiring, which wasn’t as easy as I first thought.”
When the words ‘wiring’ and ‘electronics’ are mentioned, many modellers decide to run for the
“Jonnie has made sure not to include any features that would restrict him to a particular area on the Southern Region”
hills, and while Jonnie doesn’t feel as though he falls into that category, he did have some problems shortly after the wiring was done.
“For the track I used Peco bullhead turnouts and Dccconcepts rail for the rest. But this didn’t take the solder particularly well, and after running into some problems with dead spots I performed some tests and discovered that some of the joints had developed high resistance, so I had to do them again. One of the Unifrog points also decided to completely die. At least with this being a small layout it didn’t take me too long to sort out!”
WHERE AM I?
During the Second World War, the railways removed all of the station signs so that invading troops wouldn’t know where they were. Although the signs are very much in place at ‘Paybury’ and the war was long over in the 1960s when this layout is based, Jonnie has made sure not to include any features that would restrict him to a particular area on the Southern Region. That way the viewers don’t know where they are. As a result, he can move the layout from one end of the region to the other simply by changing the stock – useful for something on the exhibition circuit.
“It will always be worth coming back to have a second look at ‘Paybury’ when you see it at an exhibition because the change in stock can move the location by about 100 miles. I’ve got plenty of storage in the form of a 4ft by 18in fiddleyard at one end so there is plenty of room for storing models ready for deployment.”
It’s not just the models that will have you stopping to look at ‘Paybury’ twice though, as it will take you a long time to fully appreciate the scenery and small details that Jonnie has placed on the layout in what was far and away the most time-consuming element of the build.
“To try and help with the speed of the build, the majority of the buildings are from Bachmann Scenecraft rather than me trying to make kits or scratchbuilding something. This is the first layout I’ve built that I’ve been happy with, and other than a few
practice pieces, I’ve not done a great deal. Rather than trying to push myself too hard and produce something that wasn’t up to standard in the available time frame I opted for modifying the Scenecraft kits instead. This is most evident with the engine shed at the front of the layout, where laser-cut ivy and scatter material line the walls, just to make it a bit different from how it is straight out of the box.”
Aside from the buildings, Jonnie spent a long time perfecting the look of the greenery and adding small details, such as the deckchairs outside the pub. There’s one area that makes ‘Paybury’ really stand out though, and that’s at the back. One of the problems a lot of modellers face is blending the backscene into the scenic section of the layout, but Jonnie has used his design skills and the equipment available to him to make this job a lot easier.
“In my role at the Spa Valley Railway, I create
graphics and banners to help promote the railway, which means I have access to Adobe Photoshop and the skills to create a long, realistic looking backscene. I was also able to closely match the colour of the wheat field in the foreground to the fibres I had for the scenic section so that the field in the backscene could also be replicated on the back inch or so of the model. Once I’d designed the backscene I was able to get it printed at the same place I get the banners for the railway and position it around the back of ‘Paybury’.”
LIGHTS AND MOVEMENT
Jonnie has not shied away from adding lights and movement to his scenery and is not looking to stop with what he has now. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice the red buttons on the front of the frame for ‘Paybury’ and these operate the two Dapol signals. Internal lights are provided by Dccconcepts and the level crossing, while not mobile at the moment, is on Jonnie’s list of jobs which, if all goes to plan, will be finished before the layout’s debut.
“Whether that happens or not I don’t know at this stage as I’ve already started work on a china clay layout, and the Spa Valley Railway exhibition is on September 11-12, so I haven’t got long to make sure everything is ready!”
We don’t have the same amount of free time that we did in the heart of the lockdowns as, thankfully, things have reopened, but even finding half an hour a day, perhaps when you would normally be commuting if you are now working from home, will result in making good progress towards a model. Perhaps you’re eyeing up a model in the corner you’ve been meaning to do for ages? Now would be a good time to start it.