Quester's Gallery
Browse a selection of fantastic layouts from fellow model rail builders.
Do you have a model railway layout you'd like to be featured on the Model Railway Quest website? Send me your best photos along with a short description and I'll add your layout to my gallery page. I'll be choosing some of the best for a featured blog post. All you have to do is send your layout details to modelrailwayquest@gmail.com and write Gallery in the subject line.
January 2024
St Bridget's - Chris Sharp
St Bridget's is an N Gauge terminus to fiddle yard layout using cassettes to change stock around. It can be controlled by DC or DCC with all turnouts operated by separate switches. Strategically placed magnets are used to remotely uncouple wagons etc. The layout is 6 feet x 18 inches with a 6 inch fiddle yard extension to allow space for the cassettes.
St Bridget's is a western region station located on the Devon- Cornwall border . It supports a busy goods shed, cattle dock and Creamery. There is an extensive passenger service for such a country backwater but at exhibitions there is a must to keep the visitors amused. The station building is a scale copy of Nailsworth Station in Gloucestershire with the other buildings either kit or scratch built.
Strathinver - Jim McGeachy
Strathinver was originally built as a test bed for the successor to my then exhibition layout Invergeachy. It also appeared in the Model Rail bookazine volume four.
The stock was backdated to late eighties early Ninetes from my original Invergeachy stock .I now run stock from the mid to late eighties as I couldn't resist the new Heljan class 27,s and 37,s.Strathinver is now ten years old and still runs as well now as it did then.
Narrow Gauge - Keith Tompkins
This is a 009 layout with a baseboard about
5’4 by 2 feet. The layout has a small grass airfield. A lift up section on one corner features a WW1 scene . The shell craters were made from toilet rolls cut into 1/4 inch strips then polyfilla slapped on.
OO Gauge - John Johnson
I got into the hobby as a way of quitting smoking as I needed something to occupy my mind. A mate suggested the idea, to which I replied - "You must be joking!" But after a trip to Warley (my first) I was hooked. I started in the spare bedroom and in the first year I had my first layout complete. That’s when I took over my workshop, to my wife’s delight, - she got the bedroom back and I got this huge space to create what it is now.
Dizzy - William Welby
This is my small N gauge layout "Dizzy". This layout was never planned - it came about because I accidentally ordered an extra circle of track and wondered what I could do with the most basic track plan imaginable! It quickly got out of hand, and before long it was an open frame layout with two scenes, a station and a tunnel. The only limitation was that I wanted to be able to take it to shows, so it had to fit in the back of a Peugeot 107 - not an easy task! For this reason the entire layout only measures 800mm across. So far it has taken me a year to build and it is almost complete (I just need a small waiting room for the station). Even though it is simple, it's loads of fun, and I enjoy being able to pass the controller to visitors at exhibitions and letting them have a go.
January
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Layout
Daws Heath - Paul Barnard
Daws Heath is my OO gauge garden railway. I started in 1977 as I had to rebuild my house. I have 4 main lines,m 58’ by 35 . I run 12. V DC, DCC, Hornby HM 7000 and Hornby live steam.
Garden O Gauge - Alan Barber
Not your usual fair, but thought you might like to see what I do. I model in O gauge, and I model things I like, mostly what I remember from my youth. The pics include a SR 4SUB EMU, a class 13 and a 76. The 4SUB being built from basic components and a fair amount of scratch building. The 13 is two modified rtr 08s, and the 76 is scratch built. The railway isn't at all scenic, having concentrated on the trains!
Bletchinghurst - Stephen Fryer
Bletchinghurst is a hop pickers layout based in Kent. It has a hop garden and an oast house, and a pub of course. The hoppers' huts are also modelled. I built the layout in memory of my family who were regular hop pickers. I also went in my younger years and have many happy memories . Two of my grandsons help me with running the layout at shows. It is mainly the home of the Southern railway, but we are very flexible and sometimes some S.E.& C.R stock does appear.
Fitzwilliam Basin - Andy Booth
Fitzwilliam Basin is a fictional layout based on buildings in and around Elsecar Heritage, a small mining village in South Yorkshire. The layout is built in O9 scale, O scale but using N scale track. This represents approx 15-18inch gauge prototypes.
The layout is DCC and, despite the small size of the locos, most have sound and stay-alive in them.
Little Marlow - Nigel Purchase
"Welcome to my first time layout in OO gauge named Little Marlow and loosely based on the 1940/50s era. It's 8 x 4 foot in size and has taken approximately 18 months to build so far."
Farkham - Lucy Pitch
I purchased this layout in 2017, and it now enjoys a well-earned retirement. The layout came with no stock, so I spend much of my time building, repainting, and weathering. I've converted the scenic area to DCC recently, and the future plan is to convert the layout from an end to end layout to a tail chaser with large fiddle Yard.
Farkham is a fictitious location somewhere in the North Midlands, during the final days of Speedlink. All of my stock is modelled, based on photos from 1990.
Dylington - James Goucher
I never planned to build this layout. It started with a Thomas train set as a Christmas present for my grandson a few year's ago. After being press ganged into putting it on a baseboard for him, I thought that was job done. But he wanted some scenery on, so after a visit to Wilkos I painted the baseboard. It wasn't long before he wanted some houses on, and then a signal box. This led to a station building, a farmhouse, a barn, tractor shed, a farm workers' cottage and a cafe!
An Artistic Model Railroad: the CNJ Newark Branch - Jonathan Jones
My layout is an n-scale version of the Central Railroad of New Jersey's Newark Branch in 1955. It is very much a British-style layout, a shelf-style, branchline terminus.
