Owner – Gavin Collins
Gauge – N gauge DCC
Layout Size – 11x6ft
Sturminster Newton is now in its third iteration after a rebuild in 2025. The layout was originally built in 2012 for use in my study at the time. By 2015, I wanted to exhibit, but I wasn’t happy with all the elements. During 2015, I replaced the backscence, some of the buildings, and reinforced the baseboards as they weren’t designed for exhibitions. As the layout changed, I collected more research and was able to make the layout more accurate. After becoming a member of the Sturminster model railway group and helping with the OO scale model of Sturminster now in the museum, I realised that there were still some areas I could improve on with a lot more photo’s and scale drawings of many of the buildings available to use. Over the years the layout had continued to run well but the track crossings on the baseboards required fettling during set up and some of the transitions caused a few problems from time to time so a decision was made to upgrade to V3.0
