Into the new

First off a very late Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog.
This year with see Herstmonceux and Tarring Neville out only a few times. Unfortunately I have had to withdraw Herstmonceux from Trainwest in April so the layouts first outing will be Railex in May. I’m really looking forward to this as I was born in Aylesbury and grew up going to the show so its a bit of a homecoming for me.  Then both layouts are out towards the end of the year with a trip to Brighton for Herstmonceux and Manchester for Tarring Neville.

As I was working on getting Tarring Neville finished last year I had some ideas about extending it. When I first started Tarring Neville it was more about using it to test out ideas than build an exhibition layout. As things progressed so too did the ideas. One being to add the cement works that were a stones throw away at South Heighton.

It was a fairly large cement works and had a rail link to the Seaford branch. It closed in 1924 though so my plan is to reduce its size a little and make out that it stayed open longer. The idea is to make South Heighton a stand alone layout but also able to be joined to Tarring Neville to make a larger layout. I’m undecided if South Heighton will end up being viewed from all sides like Tarring Neville at the minute and I will go through the ideas and planning more in another post.

Some narrow gauge will certainly feature on South Heighton. The above being a 3D print from Shapeways which is on a Tsugawa Yokou TU-KOPPEL chassis. I’m going to change the chimney and add a cab plus some other details. I have a few skip wagons already but can see I will want quite a few more! and I hope to add a small Ruston LB diesel and a O&K RL1c diesel to the NG loco fleet.