New Bourneville
New Bourneville is a HO scale model railway, set in the 1970's in the State of New York. The layout is on three levels, which includes a helix that runs to the fiddle yard. Our passion for model railways led us to create New Bourneville, a place where we can recreate the nostalgia of 1970's New York in miniature form. I hope to provide the best experience for hobbyists who are passionate about model railways and the history of New York. Visit our youtube channel and experience the joy of model railways like never before.
I guess the name has come from our love of chocolate, as some of you already know that our OO British layout has stations named Walnut End and Quality Street, So onto this our new adventure, a HO scale American switching layout, with the original baseboard being around 7\"x 1\" and with a track plan as below we will have a fiddle yard coming off from the main line, but this will removable, (the layout was being built for YMR South West show 2010) I really looked forward to this little project, as we had a lot to learn about the American railroad system, the layout will be DCC.
Peco code 83 rail was used, and the point motors again being Peco, will fix to the points and sit under them, the layout was completed, and returned back to my garage, having added a main line that ran in front of the switching section gave us the chance of the fiddle yard for the show, but looking at it back in garage, I decided that I could turn this from a small switching layout into a larger layout including a larger industrial section, with a helix leading to a large fiddle yard, plans started to develop away in my tiny brain...
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It ended up being a large 17 x 13 foot oval ish.. scenic area, that had a exit down through the helix to a large lower level fiddle yard, above which I put a loop in for a higher section (town) that joined the layout on the opposite corner from the helix, this enabled a complet loop along with a loop up and back to the exit to the fiddle yard, I worked on all of this for 6/7 years, adding another level above the helix and loop to add a large nine door roundhouse and turntable with other MPD offices ect in the next 18 months.
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In the later stages of 2018 I started to feel unwell, and had to slow down within my business, my health deteriorated over the next few years, then covid hit, on returning to work after covid it became very hard for me to continue, and after two trips to hosiptal, and a pacemaker fitted (i'm still waiting for surgery re the on-going problem) I was advised to stop working, I had to close the business of 38 years and take early retirement, this all affected me with my metal health, and I have struggled for the past two years, I'm feeling a lot more positive now, which has meant I have found my mojo and want to continue with the layout.
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So that is a brief history of the layout and the reason for this new website (the old one was deleted!) I will be adding updates on the blog and Youtube sections
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Thank you.