"You built that upside down layout, didn’t you?” So many times. I’ve been
So many times, I’ve been approached by someone asking me this. Little did I know when I flippantly told the producers of the first series of Hornby: A Model World that I could make a model train run upside down that it would become something I was remembered for. While fun to build, it is quite a boring layout to operate for a weekend; and rather hard to find somewhere to keep it. To be truthful, I had been looking for an excuse to be rid of it for good. So, when the producers approached me to build something for a second series, I saw it as a great opportunity to do just that. This time, I would be sure to pitch something a little more conventional but, hopefully, also memorable.
The idea was to take the bottom tier from the upside-down layout, with its rotating bearing and track, and remove the tower linking to the upside down element. This would be replaced by a landscape that allowed a train to pass through scenery that represented all four seasons - or rather, the scenery would pass the train while it remained stationary in the camera's lens. I knew that the
