Fairlight Works

Make It Happen

I often tell people I hate the idea of building a layout to a deadline. This continues to be correct, however the flipside is that nothing ever happens. Where this causes a problem is that I now have specific sized space at home, and the most recent unfinished layout project is not that size.

So, I thought, why not finish that layout and find a new home for it, and then start on the one that will fit better? You can imagine what happened (or didn't happen) next.

Therefore sometimes you just need to throw yourself at the problem. When the opportunity arose to take something to the upcoming Sussex Downs 009 Group members' day, with about a three month lead time, a serious look at the state of the small 009 inglenook I started during Covid times back in 2020 led me to think I actually could do something with it.

I'd actually gone a reasonable distance with it before my kids needed the spare room back for home schooling, and then we moved house, and the layout already had track, wiring, basic scenic forms, some ballast and the single building I thought it needed. So the new to-do list was, broadly: fiddle yard arrangements, make the wiring sensible, scenery, stock. Easy.

Painting it brown and doing some test pieces with the static grass applicator I'd bought (and done nothing with for 18 months) made a surprising amount of difference. Under decent lighting it actually started looking like the picture I'd had in my head, and the whole endeavour felt possible.

Encouraged, I made a jaunty sign with the extremely torturous name for the layout and started buying things that might fit well on it. The Morris van from a rummage box will need de-branding, as this is meant to be approximately the 1960s and the works yard for an oil prospecting operation on Purbeck, using the bones of an old clay tramway.

The most important thing on the list, the fiddle stick, came a bit later than the rest of this flurry of activity as it was my first attempt at designing parts for laser cutting and so they had to be made. This is now in place, along with the wiring made sense of (well, first fix at least), and the whole thing can be put up to operate in what feels like a logical way. Most importantly, it all works properly and "feels" like a real layout at last.

The steam loco is James's scratchbuilt Quintus, which came to live with me a few years ago and now finally has a suitable home. Everything from here, then, is "just" scenery and stock. No doubt I'll be burning the midnight oil at the end of March, but from the viewpoint at the start of February it seems like I might actually have a good time getting there. We'll see, perhaps I'll blog about it some more!

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