Jim's Model Railway Blog

After thirty or more years I'm returning to model railways, a hobby that I started as a kid back in the late 70's but abandoned for more exciting teenage pursuits a few years later. Things have changed a lot over the years, so I'm re-discovering model railway design, construction and operation all over again. I'm planning to build a minimal space shunting layout in OO gauge, starting out small and working out what I'm doing very much as I go along!

Tuesday 8 October 2019

John Ahern's Brilliant Books

I dug out my old original copies of John Ahern's model railway construction books, which I inherited from my granddad, in search of some inspiration for lineside industries for my shunting layout. If you are familiar with these books you will know how inspirational they are, not to mention really useful as a source of scratch building plans and layout features. A possible idea is to model a small rural dairy or creamery, which would definitely fit a GWR branch line setting somewhere in Devon or Cornwall, for example, while another option would be a lime works, corn merchants, sawmill or similar small scale light industrial facility. Some of these are all included in the books and so I have plenty of scope for some scratch building of my own, with plans and notes to give me a good starting point.