With Pickwick Yard complete I wanted to turn my sights to something bigger and more along the lines of a “proper” model railway. There were two main issues for me and the first was space. As much as I’d love to have a dedicated railway room with a permanent layout installed, that just isn’t a realistic option for me at the moment. So if I wanted a large model railway it would have to be built almost as an exhibition layout that could be setup easily and then put away for storage.

The second problem was that I had lots of ideas rattling around in my head and it would be impossible to incorporate all of them into a single model railway. Eventually I settled on building a small branchline that would be themed as a modern day heritage railway.

Originally I wanted an end to end layout with a small terminus station but then I remembered my Hornby Live Steam Mallard. The Live Steam locomotives were a fascinating experiment from Hornby and I’ve always wanted to run mine on a proper layout.

They don’t really do fine control though and the best way to run them is to have a continuous circuit. But I couldn’t have a full loop and also a terminus station so what was I to do?

The solution (as you’ve probably already guessed) was to build a modular model railway. Each module would conform to the same set of standards and would be easy to dismantle and put away - therefore I didn’t need the space for a permanent layout. The modules would be interchangeable too, so the layout could be setup end to end or as a continuous layout depending on my mood. In the future I could even create small, single module layouts and if they meet the same set of standards it would be easy to incorporate them into the existing layout!

So construction began but rather than tell you how I built a Modular Model Railway, it would be much easier to show you. I've been documenting the whole process for over a year now on my YouTube channel so take a look at the playlist below to see the project to see all the progress I've made so far!

All Episodes