Developments

Just over a year ago (is it really that long?!) I posted a couple of rough sketches showing some ideas for the layout. Since then I have managed to get all the track laid, but that's about it. Despite the painfully slow progress, on the positive side it has allowed for my ideas to develop and evolve a little more.

Since I originally came up with the track plan, one of the difficulties was trying to decide on a 'back story' for the layout that would tie things together and define it a little more. (I suppose I should have got that sorted before the track plan but there we go!)

Around the same time I was inspired by some photos of the Melingriffith Tinplate Works but I didn't want to go down the route of modelling a private industrial complex as such. Then I suggested the idea of a branch line that had lost its passenger service, with the sidings at the front perhaps being part of a goods yard with the old station just 'off scene'. However, this was all rather vague and I still felt something wasn't quite right about it.

(You might ask whether its entirely necessary to have a cohesive back story for such a diminutive layout, but its important to me - maybe even more so given the layout's small size, as it helps to set the small part you actually see within a wider imagined setting and context.)

Recently, through reading a number of books, I have been greatly inspired by the railways of the Forest of Dean and this has proved a huge inspiration in thinking about the layout.

I'm now pretty firmly decided that it should be set within the Forest of Dean during the late 1950s/early 60s. The single through-line would be one of the branches (such as the Coleford or Lydbrook branches - although I'm happy for these sort of specifics to remain vague) that ran off the main line through the forest, serving various collieries, stone works and the like. The line diverging from the loop siding at the back will be a secondary branch or long siding leading to one such facility some distance 'off stage', and the sidings at the front (for which I've had most difficulty coming up with a convincing purpose in the past) will serve loading screens for a closer to hand (though still off stage) colliery.

The screens themselves will be of fairly simple, corrugated iron construction and relatively low profile as some at the smaller collieries were (suitably rusty and dilapidated of course for the era and atmosphere I want to portray). The sidings, which currently end a few inches short of the baseboard edge, will be extended up to the very edge, with the screens (in reality built in half relief) covering the last 4 or 5 inches. (A 'proscenium arch' type arrangement will eventually help to hide the front edges at either side and create the impression of the scene continuing to the left and right.)

Running down from the back of the layout (where it will emerge from the trees) and into the top of the screens will be a trestle-supported rope-worked tubway (which could be made operational) to carry the coal from the pithead (off stage through the trees at the rear) to the screens. This, along with the screens themselves, and suitably placed small trees and scrubby undergrowth, will help to hide/disguise the 'holes in the sky' where the tracks exit to the left.

The right hand end of the layout will remain as I have always imagined it, with a bridge carrying a minor forest road across the railway and disguising the exit at that end. At the back the road will bend round and be hidden by trees and at the front the proscenium arch (and more trees) will hide it. The ground will rise up steeply all along the back of the layout with trees and bushes disguising the join with the backscene.

I know a picture would be better, but I haven't got round to it yet, so these words will have to suffice for now!

The question of location (continued)

An interesting point came up in a recent piece of correspondence with Chris Baker... the idea of superimposing a fictional geography onto an existing region, thus making the whole question of location a lot simpler. Chris has done this with 'Much Meddling', choosing an area south-west of Gloucester in the Forest of Dean and then simply making up a route and the various places around and along it, without too much concern as to whether it fits into the actual geography of the area and existing/historical rail network, beyond the main routes and larger centres of population at least. I like the idea of this a lot, as it provides much greater scope for the imagination and creative freedom (although the other side of the coin of course is that you have to work harder to establish a convincingly coherent scenario with building styles, landscape etc., but I think that's a price I'm happy to pay).

I suppose at the end of the day there are no rules here. It's whatever works for you. Horses for courses. If you can't abide the idea of modelling anything short of a precise actual location in all its prototype details, then good for you. If you're happy to create a total fiction based on nothing like any prototype that ever existed then go for it! Personally I fit somewhere in between the two extremes. If I could find an actual location that met all the criteria for a perfect layout in the available space then I might be prepared to follow that route. But as it is I haven't, so I'll let the creative juices get to work!

The question of location

There's still one pretty fundamental aspect of the layout that remains undecided and which needs to be resolved rather quickly. In fact, until it's been decided I can't even start on the trackwork....

It's just the small matter of location!

I can't seem to come to a final decision about where exactly I want to model. There are several prototype scenarios that appeal, most of which I've already written about at one time or another.

Although the exact location of the model is going to be fictional, I still need to have a fairly good idea of location - and region. My first allegiance has always been to the WR. However, the SR also appeals, and to a lesser extent the LMR. The obvious conclusion of this would be the S&D with it's joint railway status seeing locomotives and rolling stock from all three of these regions. However, the thing that slightly puts me off is the difficulty in coming up with a convincing enough scenario for a branch terminus without blatantly copying Chris Nevard's 'Combwich'! Maybe I'm not being imaginative enough but I'm just not sure.

I've already toyed with the idea of basing a layout on Llanfyllin in mid-Wales, but this layout is just too small to get away with a convincing interpretation, even acounting for modellers license.

Then there's the Bude line, and the Southern branches around Hampshire and Dorset...

Even if I don't quite pin it down exactly yet, I really do need to decide whether or not the line is in ex-GWR territory as this will determine the type of chairs used on the track. But I'm not even really sure about this!

HELP!!!!

More expansion and some Great Western leanings...

Over the weekend I printed out the new track plan at full size and laid the two plans out side-by-side on the living room floor to "compare and contrast"! On comparison, the newer plan definitely scored more highly. The flow of lines just looks 'right' compared to the old plan which felt a bit like it had been shoe-horned into the available space.

There have been a few further developments in my thinking. First, I decided that I should rebuild the baseboards. This may sound drastic given the number of hours that went into constructing the first set, but they ended up being a bit of a botched job with the frames being too small (which would pose a problem when it comes to attaching a backscene since the baseboard overhangs the frame by 3"), and the 'lightweight' construction method actually means that there is very little in the way of 'solid' wood in the frames for the fixing of things such as baseboard joining bolts, alignment dowels, the aforementioned backscene, etc. I've decided that the advantages of the lighter weight baseboards are not really sufficient to merit their use unless you're going for significantly larger baseboards than 4'x2'. I also don't think that using solid lengths of planed timber is likely to lead to serious warping of the baseboard surface since any warping would usually occur horizontally rather than vertically, which I don't see as presenting such a problem (of course, I may yet live to regret those words!). Also, rebuilding the baseboards gives me the opportunity to add a further 6" to the length by having two 4'x2' boards rather than one 4'x2' and one 3 1/2'x2' (as I explained before - the result of my being too hasty in the first instance!)

So to the plan above. It's largely the same as before with one or two very minor adjustments to make better use of the space (there's no substitue for printing the thing out at full-size in this regard). The one obvious difference is that I've added a third baseboard! Again, this is a prime case of something starting out small and growing... My thinking is that I can begin with the left and centre baseboards, then move onto the third at a later stage (perhaps when the garage is ready to provide the layout with a more permanent home). I realise now there's no point pretending this is just a 'stop-gap' project. It's already grown well beyond that even before I've laid the first piece of track, so I may as well plan ahead now to eventually be able to use all the space I'll have available in the garage.

The other big consideration currently on the table is whether to stick with my original idea of modelling a fictional S&D branch (as I previously described from Bridgwater to Nether Stowey) or whether to move to a post-nationalisation GWR branch line scene instead. This train of thought (pardon the pun!) is largely due to my recent aquisition of the first two parts of Stephen Williams' "Great Western Branch Line Modelling" (published by Wild Swan) which contain a huge amount of reference material (as well as heaps of inspiration) and which have made me realise that, by comparison, the scope for modelling a fictional S&D branch may be somewhat limited (in particular the choice of buildings and structures available to copy). I'm sure this debate will rage in my mind for some time to come so don't expect a definitive answer just yet! The most pressing 'need-to-know' factor relating to this is that if I decide to go with the GWR then I'll need to use 2-bolt chairs on my track rather than 3-bolt chairs (and that also means I can't use the C&L flexi-track so would have to hand-build the plain tack as well......).

A name at last!

I've decided upon a name and location for the new layout: Nether Stowey. (As it turns out, unsurprisingly, I'm not the first person to invent a railway line to this particular small town - a quick Google search turns up this GWR N gauge layout, see also here.)

Quantock Online has an informative page about the town (where, incidentally, the poet Coleridge lived for several years) along with a number of pictures. The link to old photos is particularly interesting.

So why Nether Stowey? After all, I've never been there, and it never had a railway.

Basically, I was looking at the OS map of Somerset, looking to see where I could 'invent' a railway that wasn't completely implausible! I decided I should stick to the S&D branch scenario after all but move my search away from the Somerset levels (given the difficulty of modelling them convincingly in a small space coupled with the absence of anywhere big enough or far enough away from the existing railways to merit a new railway line!). This opened up a number of areas I'd not previously considered, and the area West of Bridgwater seemed ideal. No railway was ever built here as far as I know, but a number of reasonable sized settlements exist to warrant the rewriting of history and conjuring up a 6 mile branch from Bridgwater to Nether Stowey, via Chilton Trinity, Cannington, and Fiddington (Chilton Trinity and Fiddington stations probably being sited some distance from their respective villages).

The idea is that after the opening of the Bridgwater railway in 1890, a new company was formed to build a railway from Bridgwater to connect up with the West Somerset railway some 20 miles away across the Quantocks. In the end, the railway ran out of money so the line was terminated at Nether Stowey, adding some justification for the small size and minimal facilities for a branch terminus.

From the photos, it seems that Nether Stowey is a fairly idyllic rural town, even today, and the surrounding countryside of rolling hills is perfect for the type of scene I want to create.