We began by visiting a train exhibition – The Great Electric Train Show – on October 12th 2024. We had space for layout of about 8ft by 4ft.

At first we thought of N guage, but that was probably too challenging and fiddly. On the other hand 00 would limit what we might do in the space. We were not aware of 009 but this became an immediate consideration when we saw a great layout. It is limited to heritage rolling stock, but we had spent many summer holidays in Wales and knew the narrow gauge tracks quite well. So 009 would be be also something of a nostalgia kick whilst allowing a narrow guage track but with the smaller 00 guage heritage trains running. The houses and people etc would also be 00 guage.

We did have a good look around the show, but came back a number of times to 009 exhibits and settled on that for our project.