Loughtbury – aka Loft Bury
A brief introduction
This is a modern day UK N Gauge layout based in my loft. It is based roughly in the 2000’s and is a fictional area somewhere in Southern England. Including the fiddle yard the layout is 16ft long by 2.5ft (4.8m by 0.9m). There are two key areas, Loughtbury, a main station with sidings and maintenance depot, and Rafferton a smaller town in the country with a short station.
They layout is permanently fixed so it cannot go anywhere which is why I thought building a website to show it was a good idea! The layout is still Work in Progress.
- DC Analogue
- Twin track set for reverse running (Trains run in each direction)
- 2 Stations serving 2 towns
- 1 fiddle yard
- Reversible Carriage sidings
- Separate goods sidings for container and aggregate traffic
- Goods run-around
- Rule 1 is in full operation – It’s my layout and I will run what I want when I want 🙂
Inspiration
Growing up I have always had a model railway, or more a train set! However, it wasn’t until a surprise gift from my Dad in my early 20’s that I discovered N Gauge. I received a Graham Farish Class 47 starter pack with the idea that I could make a small layout in my bedroom that could be packed away. That was the idea anyway, and a layout soon took over most of my room.
Life however moves on and so did I, and the railway was packed away. It wasn’t until a house purchase allowed me to have some space in the loft. I realised that I could bring my old layout back to life and build something I have always dreamt of. A proper model railway!
Over the years I had come up with so many different plans and ideas, but I never had the space to do anything about it. I now had the opportunity to literally recycle my old layout including baseboards, track, buildings and trains. My original plan was to try and recycle as much as possible, which has been a great idea but has caused a lot of problems too.
Loughtbury was born and has been from the very start a layout where I have had to learn, fix and repair many aspects. It is a ‘warts and all’ layout, due to fact some of the track is recycled, the baseboards are bit wonky and some of the trains are old. It is both a joy and a pain to use.
Track is either Peco Set Track or Streamline with Insulfrog points (or Electrofrog that I seemingly bodged a long time ago). Everything is DC analogue, and all point work is manual either using the hand of god, or some clever bamboo sticks and wire in tube under the boards.
I hope you will be able to see from the many photos how things have progressed. As with any layout there is always things to do, and it is far from finished!
