After pushing for a N gauge layout for over two years,  I eventually gave in to my son John and planning commenced. Now I have to say that this gauge was always my least favourite, but for sake of family harmony away we went.

At this time John was at university and had the inevitable day off per week, we used this time to have a look around East Anglia by train, we usually ended up at Ely! Just north of Ely station there is a bi-directional section leading to the North Junction, this was going to be the basis of the model.

The thought of having trains running on both lines in the same direction really appealed. A  byproduct was that the fiddle yard could be simplified, especially with the DMU’s that went into Ely and then came out.

The lines are on a small embankment as the ground by the river is should we say soggy’ at  the least. At this point the river comes under the railway and the Coopers Angling Club has the fishing rights. This became the layouts name.

The period we run was going to be early 2000’s which was almost current at the time. John was the main purchaser of stock as I was still mainly OO at the time.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but knowing what would happen later would have been nice! We made the layout 10′ x 3′ in 2 pieces which would lead to the sale of the layout because it would not fit in Johns new home. The garage was also only 9’6″ wide and could not go other way around as the car still had to be accommodated.  We hope to build another layout to fit, and we still have the stock,  but that’s another story.  It is now a SNCF layout based  with a private owner on the south coast.

I don’t know why, but we have very few photo’s of stock on the layout, but here are a few of the layout.