The Philden Model Railway Blog

Here's a bit of a mixed announcement... as I countdown to May 2025 marking the 10th Anniversary of the Philden Model Railway Blog, my days of modelling in Australian HO Scale are soon coming to an end. After nearly 10 years of blogging away on Philden Model Railway, writing 16 railway and model train books, building 4 Australian layouts, (and abandoning numerous others along the way), all while excitedly collecting a lot of stuff I didn't need at model train club buy-and-sells, it has reached the point where it has all become too much. Model trains can quite easily take over your life if you're not careful, and with my mind now thriving in other creative fields, it is the right time to put things back in their place. For the foreseeable future, I've decided to keep my model train hobby contained to the OO9 Welsh Highlands narrow gauge layout I started constructing last year. The layout is small and compact enough to be able to come with me anywhere, with the added advan