Search the Community

In a world of social media and texting, abbreviations and initials are common place, but unless you're a youngish girl, 'MLP' probably doesn't mean much to you! If you are a young girl, you probably know that 'MLP' is short for "My Little Pony"; popular toys for many years and an animated TV series. I can hear the murmurs of confusion echoing around the internet, so what does all this have to do with modelling? WELL!! If you're looking for aeroplanes, armour, warships etc, you've come to the wrong page. If you want to see something a bit different, with lots of scratch building and an unusual theme, then take a seat. My daughter ( now heading towards nine ), loves making things. She's built several plastic models, starting just before she was four years old. The Spitfire diorama below was one which she sold for a healthy profit! Around June 2016, I was looking for a project to help to fill in the six weeks of the Summer school holiday. My daughter was six at the time and for a while, we'd talked about making a small model railway. This would be a good holiday project involving lots of different skills. However, for a six year old girl, I didn't think a normal railway model was interesting enough to capture her imagination. My wife suggested a more fantasy railroad with fairy castles etc., but I wasn't sure. A few days after the initial conversation, my daughter and I were watching recorded episodes of "My Little Pony" on TV, and the particular episode featured the railroad that runs through 'Equestria', the land of "My Little Ponies". Hmmmm! the gears in my brain began to grind around and suddenly made a connection!! Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs had recently featured small toy "My Little Ponies" that were about an inch and a bit long. These would make ideal characters for a small "My Little Pony" themed railroad. My daughter was over the Moon with the idea; so that's what we did. The layout would be about three by two feet in size, which would fit in the top of her wardrobe when not being used. It would be a simple oval with one switch leading up a small track to a station. There would be a dividing backscene through the middle of the layout to create two different areas of interest. Here's the initial idea. I've been doing some more work on it recently, but really need to take you back to the beginning of the story first.