Recently I’ve been helping out Simon George with his O gauge Heaton Lodge project, click the link for a real time stroll down its frontage. This week the final preparations and installation of the layout at Wakefield Market Hall has been taking place.

Over the past two days myself and Tim Horn have been assembling the lighting rig and fittings the backscene to the layout.

It’s fair to say it’s ‘big’, it took three articulated trucks to deliver it. In true journo style to emphasise the scale of the model, it’s the length of seven London busses, if you stood it on its end it’d be taller than Nelsons column, and to emphasise it’s jumbo dimensions, it’s length is the same as the wingspan of a Boeing 747…

All the more remarkable is it’s primarily the work of one person, Simon George. The layout is having its first public outing in December, from the 4th to the 19th inclusive.

Tickets and details are available here, Britain’s Biggest Model Railway

If you’ve got some time available, and you want to see an epic personal and modelling achievement in the real sense of the word, come and visit.