Yaughton and Tipworth - layout based on a video game, set in Shropshire.

[OnTheBranchline]

There is a video game that I love called "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture", which is set in a fictional area of Shropshire in June 1984. The story behind the game is that the player is exploring a deserted town/valley and slowly finds out why all the people in the town/valley have all disappeared. It's a very British take on the apocalypse, and an emotional one too (there's nothing you can do to alter the story and save the people). The whole game has wonderful graphics and really gives you the feeling of being there.

 

 

 

Two areas of the video game involve walking by a junction/signal box (Tipworth Junction) and then the main station (Yaughton and Tipworth Station). In terms of a railway perspective, there is a timetable in the station that indicates that Yaughton and Tipworth sits in between Wrexham and Shrewsbury. Now, on a map in the real world, the railway runs from Shrewsbury to Wrexham in a northwesterly direction but the map from the game clearly shows the line running west to east (nothing that can't be solved with rule #1). It seems like the area is on a branch-line rather than the main-line between Shrewsbury and Wrexham. (due to the singling of track in certain places) but I could be wrong.

 

I've made two videos of the junction and the station. Together the videos are just over 11 minutes. If anyone wanted to watch to give their opinion if these locations could be modeled/how prototypical the locations as they are are, it would help.

 

Tipworth Junction:

 

Yaughton and Tipworth Station:

 

I have the idea of recreating the railway in OO form but in GWR days. I don't have much information on what type of train movements would happen in between Shrewsbury and Wrexham on a daily basis (although I would imagine that there would be quite a few being on the GWR mainline to the north).

 

What do you guys think?

 

Fun fact: There's a pond named Kynaston's Pond which I believe is a reference to Kynaston's Cave.