Philden Beach

I've long had a fascination for the New South Wales North Coast Line. Growing up in Gosford I was always watching trains on the Short North line, wondering where they were going as they headed north out of Sydney.

Today, the former branch lines and the majority of the railway yards along the NSW North Coast Line may have long closed, but 'the beach' offers a fictional locomotive service point situated halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. Throw in some light industry, and there's enough entertainment value to operate some modern Pacific National and Aurizon freight trains.

PHILDEN BEACH: the NSW North Coast

SCALE: 1:87 HO / ERA: 2016+ / LIFESPAN: 2019 - NOW / EXHIBITIONS: 2

Philden Beach is a fictitious rail yard set against the stunning backdrop of Coffs Harbour, NSW.

Inspiration for Philden Beach first came while holidaying with my young family in Coffs Harbour back in March of 2005. Fast forward a couple of decades and both my children are now grown and married. I commenced building this layout in 2019 as a way of preserving the memories from those family holidays and beyond, set in a fictitious destination along the NSW North Coast Line that I perhaps daydreamed about as a young child.

The freestanding 3.3 metre long x 450 mm wide benchwork supports two layout modules that sit atop. A series of mini disasters on the original modules ultimately led to a restart, and by early 2021 a taller, single module and adjoining 5 track staging yard had been completed to sit atop the same benchwork frame. Despite initially being modelled as my inner-Melbourne layout Philden Street Yard, a layout revamp in 2023 transformed the setting back to the tropical North Coast of New South Wales and remains the basis for what you see today. Yes, it's been a long road to get to Philden Beach!

And now for the best part... welcome to my 3.3 metre long (10' 8" x 1' 5") HO shelf layout.

The change of scenery through means of replacing the backdrop on my former Philden Street Yard layout, became the idea for my book Model Railway Backdrop Basics.

By now I had more than enough experience from both painting and printing backdrop murals across a number of layouts that I wanted something tangible to flip through years later, rather than trying to find an old blog post! Replacing the layout's backdrop from the inner-city grit and grime of industrial Melbourne to the tranquil NSW North Coast setting of Coffs Harbour, ended up being one of the most amazing layout transformations I have ever seen. But I didn't stop there.

Over the next 12 months, my Philden Street Yard layout was totally revamped on its way to becoming Philden Beach. With its new backdrop in place, I spent the rest of the year re-signing my existing buildings, re-vegetating the scenery and creating a new signature feature on the layout, all while removing any conflicting details that tied the layout to its previous location.

They are all projects that I covered in my final book Revamp An existing Layout. Along with overhauling my layout's locomotive and rollingstock roster and clearing out any items that didn't belong on the newly revamped layout, I actually pocketed a small profit without needing to lift up a single inch of track!

Once again, the other half of Philden, my wife Denise, has joined me in taking this layout on the road to some exhibitions. At home, it remains set-up in our apartment as a fictitious town somewhere on a beach, and a welcome escape at the end of a long day.