Most people's perception of a model railway is an arrangement of track work, decorated with some buildings and a cursory backdrop rising briefly to a sloping ceiling. Not so with Chadbury. When you walk into what was a 17ft square, double garage, you enter another world. The eyes look up before they look down at a painted backdrop, which is 8ft high and painted in oils, with watercolor landscapes of the Pennine hills. A dark satanic sky rises above the 'Cliff' cotton mill, which is 7ft wide to a tower top at 40 inches high, along with with 166 windows.
As you enter, on the left you see a canal basin surrounded by factories that continue around the layout until the town of Chadbury is reached. The doorway is bridged by a girder bridge, which completes a continuous circular track. To the left lies the shed area, to the right lies the station. At a lower level to the main layout lies a street lined with terraced houses and further industrial and wharf buildings serving another canal. Creating the various buildings has been a great interest of to the author who has demonstrated how he builds and weathers them in the book. All the buildings light up, providing both a daytime and nighttime look to the layout.
It is DCC operated, and the loco stock is ex-LMS and LNER in a begrimed BR livery. Notes on materials used, tips on weathering and building dimensions are all there to help, and hopefully inspire, the would-be modeler. The book includes over 100 photographs and a detailed track plan.