Windward is the fictitious location for my Scottish themed “OO” gauge layout. It has taken 5 years to get to its present setting based from the start of 2005 onwards. It’s a mixture of Industrial and residential and rural scenery, as I wanted to make the layout look ‘busy’. The continuous double track layout incorporates a locomotive depot, shops and a station,vgbfn
The railway has always interested me, probable because my dad has had a layout and his dad.
Asked by this developing website manager to write a description of Windward by modern image model railway is quite a challenging task even though my website that I run on it has not been updated since the end of the modeling season ended in March the description on it needs to be updated! When I received the email it told me that my railway was up to standards so the standards must not be very high because Windward isn’t an exhibition standard layout!
Windward is a modern image model railway set on the east coast of Scotland from around 2005-Presant day. The layout is an 8ft by 4ft 6”; the baseboard made from plywood and also stands on four legs. The tracks are Hornby 00 scale and some of the points are electrified with Gaugemaster points. The signals are all home made and use LED’s (3mm). The control is by DCC, the E-Z Command system.
The rolling stock is a mixture of Hornby, Lima and Bachmann and the ever-growing fleet continues to grow, we run at the moment a Hornby 7 car GNER (2x 1st, 1x TGS(lima) 1x Restaurant/buffet, 4x 2nd), Lima Class 67 (EWS), Bachmann Class 66 (EWS), Bachmann Class 66 (Freightliner), Bachmann Tamper, Bachmann Class 170 (First ScotRail), Bachmann Class 170 (ScotRail) and hopefully soon a Hornby Class 60 will be added to the extending fleet!!
All the locomotives on the layout are weathered or super detailed by myself to make them look as realistic as possible. They are done round the exhaust outlets with Humbrol matt 33 and an undercoat of Railmatch “Roof Dirt” I am particularly proud of my Class 220 Virgin Voyager because the radiator grills on the top came out very well with a new technique or painting and then smudging to get a really good effect of rusting/dirty grills.
The ballasting is N gauge and done with a 50/50 mix on PVA glue and water but the ballast has not done between the sleepers incase the layout is needed to be dismantled. The grass is a very fine rubber green. Or a paint mix with sawdust mixed in, the vehicles are a mix on camera or hotwheels!
Looking into the future I hope to complete my GNER with another 2 standard class coaches also some more Bachmann TTA wagons and a Hornby Class 60, on the scenery front I want to ballast between the sleepers and around the points but I have nearly run out of ballast. Hopefully to increase the size of the layout to accommodate the full length GNER!