It's not a model railway, it's toy trains...

At times I wonder if my portable layout is anywhere near good enough to be put on public display, even after one successful weekend a couple of years ago I still think it can be improved and there are better representations of vintage Hornby Dublo out there, with more running tracks, more going on, more action.

This was something that we debated at times during our recent weekend outing and, after some more convincing and another request to display, I guess there's something here worth seeing.

It's been commented that my layout, with its minimal scenery and stock whizzing round at totally unrealistic speed, is actually fairly faithful to the original table top design that Hornby had in mind. It's not a model railway, it's a toy train set - you take 'em out of their boxes, you chuck those to one side and you "rag it" as fast as it can go without flying off the track, and that seems to be the theme with every 3 rail layout I've ever come across. Warley, Ally Pally, everything runs at far beyond normal running speed and there's always something whizzing round.

A few commented that at recent exhibitions they'd seen folk struggling with DCC operated layouts. I know from bitter experience that if something fails then it can stop the entire layout, meaning rebooting everything sometimes multiple times and all the time you're doing that, nothing can be run! At least during our last public outing we kept something running throughout the entire weekend. This time if we need a break and want to cheat then we can fire up an EPB or two - these things can run for hours and due to their modern couplings they don't come undone, not something you can do with a rake of mail vans, Pullmans or even goods wagons - you can't turn your back on Dublo, not even for a few seconds!

Even I had to accept during our discussion that during our last public outing we attracted people of all ages - kids loved watching whatever was running, while the parents and grandparents, after explaining what they were looking at, would often just comment...

"I had one like that."