About

Hello and welcome.

My name is Giles, I am a 50 something man, happily married to my wife Sarah. We currently live in glorious Gloucestershire in the UK, where I am informed all the intelligent and beautiful people are.

History

Originally from Windsor, Berkshire, I spent many a happy hour ‘playing’ with my ‘train set’ as a child with my parents, as many of us do. Setting up on the living room floor for a few hours, then packing it all away before bedtime. I moved to Gloucestershire for my further education and in my twenties moved all over the country working for many companies, managing pubs and hotels, eventually working up to general manager of a Gloucestershire catering hire firm.

Model Making – “It’s all wheels on rails!”

In the early noughties, I was reintroduced to the world of model railway clubs and model railway exhibiting. Many years since, with involvement in the construction of exhibition quality layouts, plus exhibiting them all over the country has been fun. I also met my wife Sarah, who is into railway modelling too.

Professional Model Maker

Come 2010, I co-founded a layout and baseboard manufacturing company with one of my club friends and best man, John. We made over 5000 baseboards of all different shapes and sizes, both CNC and handmade. Designing room plans, laying track in gauges N up to O and wiring over 150 layouts in both Analogue, specialising in Cab Control, and Digital Command Control.

In 2017 John had a stroke, my friends and I have been helping him cope with his disabilities up to February 2025 when he was rushed into hospital and died from various complications. I had many difficulty’s keeping all of the plates spinning in the air after this and in 2018-2020, so I reluctantly closed the company. The climate at this time was not conducive to visiting other peoples houses and all of the prices went through the roof.

 

A separate venture called Giles Walburn Design was formed after the closure in 2020 for my own use. In 2025, Model Rail Design was launched, and is now the online face of Giles Walburn Design. I wanted the GWDesign URL, but it had already been taken by other companies.

I have been maintaining some of the layouts we professionally built over the years as a freelance consultant, along with working part time for Sarah at her chartered accountancy practice, Padam Walburn Accounting Services.

In this period my own health declined, and mid 2024 I died on the operating table from a ruptured brain aneurism and hydrocephalus. Thankfully the wonderful surgeons, nurses and support staff at Southmead Hospital in Bristol performed miracles and brought me back. I lost the full use of the right hand side of my body, along with the memory of the subsequent week after the operation.

The physios managed to get me up and walking the following week and with a lot of rest, and by the end of 13 days, I walked out. It took me the next seven months to get back to something like the normal I had before, I will never be the same physically again, but I still have my mind.

The shock of this episode in my life has brought a new focus for me to accelerate my ideas of sharing the knowledge I have, before retirement. I have watched too much history lost to time. In my seven months of recovery I have learned how to transfer some of my design skills to 3D printing and laser cutting.

The Future

Sarah and I are now finally starting on our own projects, which I plan to document here. Spending over 20 years coming up with solutions for myself and customers, to problems we all have in the modelling world, I will be uploading my solutions in the form of videos, guides and plans, along with items for sale. There will be bespoke 3D printed and laser cut items for sale, as I design them for both you and myself.

I hope with interaction from all you fellow creative people, we can create a healthy and productive knowledge base for future generations to come.