The History of Broadgate

The idea of Broadgate first came up during a conversation in late 1999. We were reading a railway modelling magazine. There was an article in the magazine about a small layout which had a size of only 3 foot by 2 foot and had only two points on it. We thought something small, but detailed like this could be interesting to build.

At this time we decided on a 4 foot by 18 inches baseboard, mainly because we already had a baseboard this size in our garage. This was previously going to be part of another layout, but it was no longer needed for this. And so Broadgate was born.

The next problem to solve was stock. We already had a large range of modern image locos, but we though we would like to try something new. This problem was almost immediately solved when we found a pair of old Lima 'Warships' and another pair of Lima 'Westerns'. The initial plan was to add a class 46 and a class 47 plus a few other locos at a later date. This soon changed.

In the beginning we had not planned to take the layout to any exhibitions at all, in fact we expected it would stay tucked away in its room for its entire life span. This of course did not stay as originally planned.

Before construction actually began, the layout was going to be 4 foot by 18 inches, have around 10 locomotives and, be set in the western region between 1968 - 1972 and would be mainly a stabling point. We finished basic planning around November or December 1999. Then we started cleaning up the baseboard, and work began in earnest.