Back in 2018, I posted this plan and photo of Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight, as a near perfect small branch line terminus.  A scale model fits within 4′ in ‘N’ gauge.

The beach directly to the north of the station.  The large hotel in the background is long gone.  The station is replaced by a housing development, but I’m told that you can still see the location of the little 25′ turntable, where there is a circular crack in the road concrete.

I’ve been gathering pictures of the station, and still hope to build the layout.  But I’ve drawn a complete blank on drawings of the station buildings.  There was a post on NGF describing how someone had 3D printed the station building.  I expressed interest, but all went totally quiet, even when followed up.

However, reading Facebook, I recently remembered that there is an OO layout of Bembridge still on the exhibition circuit.  I contacted Mark Pretious, and he kindly invited me over to Alton to measure and photograph the model.  So, if I build this, it will be a model of a model, but I suspect that it will be accurate enough for N gauge.  So having dug the layout out of the back of his garage, I measured things up and took these photos.

Interesting is the mechanism for the turntable.  No stopper motors or the like here – a rather prehistoric arrangement but it still works!

Mark is the exhibition manager for the Alton show, so we spent some time comparing notes on how to herd cats.  Mark is also part of the team that runs the Gauge 3 Blackgang layout at exhibitions, and he showed me his latest creations – 3D printed Gauge 3 Oldbury coaches.  Delightful!

So the question is – should this layout be N gauge, or 2mm finescale?