Some years ago now, I converted from N gauge back to OO when I received a Wrenn Brighton Belle set. Born in Brighton and spending the first 14 years of my life living near the west coastway, I soon developed a fascination for the different types of trains running in the 40's and 50's in my part of the world.

Now with my own Belle, it was time to try and recapture some of my youth so plans were made to build an extensive layout which would include a terminus for the Belle to be admired in a station (Brighton or Victoria) and one or two through stations on a journey that the Belle would take. Brighton seemed the obvious choice because in addition to a large variety of electric and steam trains, one has the Pullman works at Preston Park and a viaduct on the east coastway which gave rise to an interesting track plan (with lots of modeller's licence!!!). Preston Park is the first station on the layout after leaving Brighton (real and model) and I then picked Burgess Hill as the second station as that is where my grandfather lived.

3 years ago, I decided to rebuild the layout completely to allow 4 mainline trains to run concurrently with further train movements from yards to platforms and vice versa. This required a rethink of Burgess Hill so following consultation with myself, the decision was made to have a 4 road station with platforms only on the outer slow lines. Brighton has 11 platforms and the rehash saw 2 of them becoming through lines which I am attempting to make as unobtrusive as possible for obvious reasons. Electrics are live, everything runs but work has slowed down because every time I go aloft, the urge to run trains hits me and modelling suffers!

Track work is all laid and about one third of the scenics are complete(ish).

The types of EMU stock to run on the layout were all available in kit form from Roxey, Ian Kirk and Phoenix so over the years, the Xmas pressy list included the next EMU project and Santa always managed to deliver.

All photographs below are by Nigel Millar.