Paxton Road - unplanned yet realised success...

We recognise, without ourselves, a passion for model railways. Passion a deliberately chosen, powerful description. This is not some light interest or casual encounter. We, and I include you dear reader, love these miniature worlds that we build around our trains...

Paxton Road in the 1980s... Birkenhead or perhaps Ispwich?

I built Paxton Road just over 3 years ago as an experiment. An opportunity to try out British N scale, to see how it felt to work in this small size - but also, I'm slightly ashamed to admit, as a response to a comment from another modeller on social media who proclaimed you couldn't build a characterful cameo layout, like I had in OO with Pont-y-dulais, in the smaller scale.

The result has surpassed all expectations. I love it. I love visiting it. I love driving and playing trains on it. Just 55cm long it is tiny yet expansive and is continually re-invented as a stage for my current muse. 

Today you see the red and white barrels at the end of the tarmac and a Class 03 that transport, at least me, to the ribbons laid in the cobbles of Birkenhead Docks... yet just a few weeks ago she played host to bogie steel wagons and the green 03 as I imagined shunting Boston. Prior to that you may have found any one of the increasing collection of Class 08 and the motley 'Speedlink' era wagon medley that constantly evolves here too...

Two tracks yes... just two parallel tracks. 

Smooth, quiet, effortless operation with these Farish marvels and DG couplings.

I often find myself grabbing, no, snatching a moment as I'm walking past - flicking the on switch and shuffling a few wagons around the yard. No matter the period, the stock, the setting in my mind - the mindful shunting, tactile operation, enveloping eye level scene and the ability to get inches from the models is incredibly immersive. This is absolutely superb for my mental health - it's calming, it's a place to gather my thoughts. I love it for this alone, but for so much more.

Paxton Road continues to be the best layout I have ever built...

Distilling the success, perhaps is more difficult...

• Simplicity? Easy to use and interact with - relatively quick to build. Nothing to go wrong (well not much) and easy to set up.
• Reliability? Trains just work, magnetic uncoupling works (most of the time) for hand free shunting.
• Tactile? The hand held DC controller, the magnet operating rods, the sliding of the sector plate - they're all touch points that ground me in the scene.
• Blank canvas? The layout feels a lovely place, inspired by Barnstaple but could be a small yard anywhere - or even a small bit of a larger yard. I can ring the changes by swapping the stock. As my interest is building and modifying the trains themselves this means the layout allows me somewhere to play with them without having to build a specific scene each time.

But these factors - they weren't all deliberate... however since then they have informed the design work  that illustrates the pages of the most recent books. In the years since I've often considered its replacement, and have even built a similar project (Gerald Road) that copies the track plan - but nothing has evoked the same feelings as this first composition. I will continue to enjoy it and muse on its success - and share this with you. I hope you can take a little of my love for it from these words and pictures, and that enthuses you with your own projects, your own models, your own miniature worlds. Until next time, more soon...

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