This is the home page of the Maine Central Railroad's (MEC) White Mountain Branch - never heard of it? Well that's not really a huge surprise as it never really existed except in HO scale in my garden shed (2001-2010).

Work commenced in October 2001 and progress was sporadic over the following 7 years, with all work ceasing on the half complete layout in Fall 2008. Due mainly to domestic circumstances, but partly frustration with the layout's several short-comings, it is shortly due to be dismantled and join the ranks of the fallen flags. The Progress reports tell the full story of the layout and gives the latest news.

Background
In 2001 I purchased my first US outline models, I was soon hooked on the American way of doing things and wanted a US style layout (i.e. extensive and non-portable - and very un-British) to run them on. From the outset I was interested in the US north-east and decided to model a MEC line with some Boston & Maine (B&M) trackage rights; like parts of the real MEC Mountain Division. This was a good decision and collecting just one or two railroad's equipment is something I would heartily recommend.

Modelling a prototypical section of the Mountain Division or the B&M's Intervale branch were briefly considered, but then compared to what I wanted from operational and scenic points of view it would have been tricky to fit in the space available. There is the added disadvantage that visits to the prototype, for photos and measuring up on site, would be very infrequent as I live in Hampshire, England.

My main objectives were for:

• a model that could go together relatively easily
• lots of New England scenery
• a through run - for relaxing after work watching the trains go by
• the option of point to point operations - for more serious operating sessions

I wanted to get away from scratch building wherever possible (I'd done lots of that in 5.5mm scale) and felt it took me too long to get anywhere; I set myself the challenge that none of the principle structures should be scratch-built but be either kits or kit-bashed. As it transpired this was a red herring and it didn't happen like that; I found that building anything to the standards I find acceptable takes a while.

I devised a track plan based on one published by Iain Rice in Small Smart & Practical Track Plans, as the N&W Abingdon Branch. The space I had was slightly longer than the published plan so there is a larger isle between the "water wings", I've also taken elements from Iain's N scale Cherry- picked New England plan in the same book and added a few ideas of my own.

I also created a fictions history & location - see pages on the links above.

The result - I hope - was a through route with a slightly more mainline feel than the N&W Abingdon Branch backwater and several industries to keep the way-freights busy for operational interest. I've drawn a lot of inspiration from photos of the MEC Mountain Division mainline and its Beecher Falls Branch, together with a visit to the White Mountains area in May 2001 (and again in Fall 2005).

One additional feature over the published plan is that as there was quite a large isle at the rear I would scenic the storage yard and had enough space to add a small engine terminal (something I really wanted to model). In the draft plan I added a removable lower level industrial area which exits to a hidden cassette enabling point to point operation, but this proved unworkable in real life and was never built.

To a large extent the plan was influenced by the space it had to fit in, and what has to share that space - a 10' x 14' garden shed with all the usual stuff like lawnmowers and work-benches that also have to fit in.

The main town on the layout was called Cambridge NH; Cambridge is a good New England name (just take a look through any road atlas) and as I got quite a bit of inspiration from my visit to Lincoln NH, Cambridge is the next County to Lincoln in England! (And yes - I guess that Lincoln, NH was probably named after the President rather than the English town - although you never know in New England).

The rear staging yard represented towns further up or down line.

During the building process, and as predicted above, several changes were made to the plan, these are detailed in the individual progress reports, and a new "final" plan was published here in 2004.

The model was set sometime around early fall 1953; this allowed me to run steam power as well as first generation diesels and still have passenger traffic, plus have fall foliage. Besides which 1950's America looks great through a viewfinder! However, herein lay a design problem, as the curves were really too severe for most steam power and passenger cars. Another major flaw which only transpired later was insufficient staging space.

It was planned to make the layout convertible to different eras (say 1970's and 1890's) by making the structures easily removable. Although some different era rolling stock and autos were obtained, this was never progressed.