Chadbury: A Town and Industrial Scape in ''0'' Gauge

Most people''s perception of a model railway is an arrangement of track work, decorated with some buildings and a cursory backdrop rising briefly to a sloping ceiling. Not so with Chadbury. When you walk into what was a 17ft square, double garage, you enter another world. The eyes look up before they look down at a painted backdrop, which is 8ft high and painted in oils, with watercolour landscapes of the Pennine hills. A dark satanic sky rises above the ''Cliff'' cotton mill, which is 7ft wide to a tower top at 40 inches high, along with with 166 windows. As you enter, on the left you see a canal basin surrounded by factories that continue around the layout until the town of Chadbury is reached. The doorway is bridged by a girder bridge, which comples a continuous circular track. To the left lies the shed area, to the right lies the station. At a tower level to the main layout lies a street lined with terraced houses and further industrial and wharf buildings serving another canal. Creating the various buildings have been a great interest of mine, and I have demonstrated how I build and weather them in the book. All the buildings light up, providing both a daytime and night-time look to the layout. It is DCC operated, and my loco stock is ex-LMS and LNER in a begrimed BR livery. Notes on materials used, tips on weathering and building dimensions are all there to help, and hopefully inspire, the would-be modeller. The book includes over 100 photographs and a detailed track plan. See more