Peter Mantle's Gallery :: Fotopic.Net

Llanbourne is a “OO” Gauge layout, which I have been in the process of building for about fifteen years now, and it is about 80% complete. Before you go looking in your rail atlas let me reassure you that Llanbourne is totally fictional but is, in my mind at least, imagined to be situated on the North Wales coast. I have used my modellers’ licence and placed Llanbourne where Llandudno and Llandudno jct should be. This makes Llanbourne a through terminus; all trains running between Crewe and Holyhead have to come into Llanbourne to run round or change locos. With Llanbourne I have tried to recreate a realistic atmosphere. And I think what has helped me along the way is choosing a time period I remember. During the mid eighties I spent many weekends photographing and riding behind my favourite locos. During this time I didn’t spend much time in north Wales and it wasn’t until 1989-90 that I realised North Wales would be a good location to model; the main reason for this was the variety of locos and stock I could run. Where else could you regularly see class 33’s with 25’s, 45’s and 40’s? The trains that run on Llanbourne are typical to what was running in north Wales during the mid eighties with a focus on corrected braking and heating types, though as with the real thing no heat locos do appear on some passenger trains. My locos are all RTR I have detailed and repainted them from photos. Stock is mainly RTR, with a few kit built wagons. All stock is weathered; again from photo’s. I also use Kadee’s, which helps a lot when ‘playing’ trains. The layout still needs more buildings most notable being the loco shed and overall roof for the station, plus all those other little details, maybe, I should stop working on stock and it will get done.

Top Photographs of All Time

1	c..JPG		Playing Trains.	(1233)
2	f._33026_ready_to_go_to_the_carriage_sidings..JPG		Early morning at Llanbourne.	(380)
3	r..JPG		Playing Trains.	(341)
4	layout7.jpg	Another view	Llanbourne	(331)
5	d._47546_departs_on_IC_train.JPG		Playing Trains.	(310)

Most Recent Collections

	7th Feb 2009	New pictures. Here are just a few pictures taken recently. The 108 is one of two new units to enter into service on Llanbourne.Lack of updates last year was due to me running out of room on the website and not bothering to do any thing about it. Hopefully things will be back to normal now and I can do regular updates unfortunatly this means some older updates will have some pictures removed. My real train pictures have been moved to a new site called Peter's Trains.
	11th Sep 2008	Playing Trains. I have replaced three points in the station area and done a bit more point rodding in the last month. So decided to run a few trains to test everything. Here are a few pictures.
	10th Jul 2008	Recent pictures. I am still experimenting with the new camera, these ones seemed quite good though not enough depth of field.
	1st Jun 2008	New shunters for Llanbourne. I have just finished two Hornby class 08s to replace my Bachmann locos. I was never 100% happy with the way the Bachmann locos ran, and after seeing a friend's Hornby 08 run on my layout I decided the Bachmanns had to go. 08695 is a dual braked loco which will be used as station pilot, and 08472 is an air brake only loco which will be used in the yard and for tripping the oil train to the terminal.
	12th Apr 2008	Pictures with new camera. Just been playing with a new camera. So the pictures should have a bit more depth of field, I still need to work out some better lighting though.
	3rd Feb 2008	Bits and pieces. Just a few pictures of wagons and some more of my Heljan class 33s.
	6th Jan 2008	Happy New Year. Just a few pictures of what I have done recently. I have hardly been out to the garage, what with Christmas and not least the fact that the last few weeks have been a little on the hot side with most days being over 30*C. (New Years eve was 40!) My garage has a tin roof so is rather like an oven. The last two pictures are scans of photos I took in the UK during the Eighties. A bit of nostalgia for me. I'm hoping to be able to add more of my old pictures this year.
	16th Dec 2007	Early morning at Llanbourne. Just a few shots taken when playing trains a couple of weeks ago.
	4th Dec 2007	Friend's layout This is Stuart Westermans awesome Mousehaven layout. It has a number of stations, runs to a timetable and has regular weekly running sessions. I have seen the layout a number of times and always find something interesting to look at. The latest addition is a 'steelworks' which is rather impressive.
	22nd Nov 2007	Friend's layout This is Jeff Lynn's Southern based layout currently being converted to DCC. The layout has a mainline station with a short branchline leading to a small terminus and loco shed.The layout is not yet finished; with more scenary work to do, but as you can see it looks good so far.