1. Introduction

This blog is about my struggle to complete the model railway exhibition layout “Kyle of Sutherland”. The layout shows Culrain station in the former county of Ross-shire, Scotland, as it was in 1960 at a scale of 4mm to the foot with track and rolling stock to P4 standards. Trains are from the post-nationalisation period up to 1962 when the last steam locomotive left the far north of Scotland.

I started in 2001, helped considerably over the years by tutors on the railway modelling courses at Missenden Abbey in Buckinghamshire. Since 2011 I’ve had help and advice from members of the Devon Finescale Modellers Group, Pendon Museum tutors, staff and volunteers, and more recently by the Craven Area Group of the Scalefour Society.

Kyle of Sutherland was first exhibited as a non-scenic work-in-progress at Scaleforum 2012 (the final Scaleforum exhibition at Leatherhead) and, in revised form, at the Exeter Show in 2013. The first public showing of the scenically complete layout was in September 2015 in Culrain Village Hall just across the road from the real, but now much simplified, Culrain station.

The current focus is on completing and testing an exhibition sequence of 10 trains for showing at Railex 2018.