The Busvine Line: The Busvine Line. Began May 2016

In 2016 the shed housing the train set-up required some heavy repair work, so the whole railway caboodle had to be dismantled and packed away before the required work could be carried out.
When replaced several changes were made to the track design and some of the buildings were scrapped or replaced. These are some photographs of the new layout.
Note: The photos shown below are fairly representative of the present set-up (April 2018) although the layout is constantly being updated.

Link: Video of the tennis court area

Link: Video of the church and town

Link: Railway running along by the beach

Link: More Trains

Link: A clever bit of parking!

Top Ten Tips

1: There's a good shop in Portishead that stocks model railway stuff at reasonable prices (although all model railways stuff is unreasonably priced). You can also order on-line from them: http://www.modelrailwaysdirect.co.uk/

2: The best trees are crafted using wire (see YouTube).
But...they can also be made from twigs stroked with pva glue and then covered in 'reindeer moss'. Reindeer moss is available cheaply in bulk from floristry suppliers and comes in a variety of colours. Flocking can also be purchased, although this is more expensive, so it pays to mix things up a bit. Bare twigs can also make good trees, particularly the dried thorn ones and blackberry stems.
Trees with flowering white blossom can be made from dried white 'sea foam' statis, which is available inexpensively from floristry suppliers. There are also some fluffy dried grasses that look like trees. The seed heads of Buddleia also look good, either left natural or else sprayed dull green.

3: Glue dots sprinkled with 'Flower Soft', which is an inexpensive craft flocking product, make good flower patches.
The yellow and blue looks best I think.

4: Baseboards can be painted green and/or brown and then covered with well-crumbled Oasis block crumb. We've also used loose tea leaves, coffee powder, glass sand (from floristry suppliers), and out-of-date dried kitchen herbs. These offer varied textures and interest. The up-to-date static flocking makes far superior grass, but is a lot more expensive of course.

5: An effective derelict castle can be made out of artistically cut toilet and kitchen roll tubes painted grey and sponged with shadow shades (although ours is covered in grey stone-like paper) before covering in places with reindeer moss.

6: A sponged blue and white cloudy affect painted on the walls works well as a general background to the layout. Hills and novelty items can be painted on top of this.

7: The best 'people' figures we've found are made by Presier and Noch. These aren't cheap however. Alternatively, packs of a hundred 'basic' people are cheaply available on Ebay. These are ok as space fillers. They also make useful car drivers (where their legs need to be cut off).

8: The best-value decent quality building kits (for houses etc) we've found are by 'Metcalfe'. 'Super Quick' models are also pretty good. We've used several cheaper card kits but they will be replaced in time. Hornby buildings are excellent, but very expensive.

9: Roads can be made from adhesive-backed black rubber sheet 2mm thickness. This is inexpensive on Ebay.

10: We've mostly used pva and clear 'uhu' adhesives.