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About this blog

The New Forest has a really beautiful stretch of coastline with a lot of history; yet at its east end, it's a mere stones throw from serious industrial sites like Fawley Oil Refinery and the huge power station (now undergoing demolition)! Despite featuring recognisable prototypical locations, this will be an entirely fictional account of the area, with a focus on local freight, and featuring a real ragtag collection of stock. Simply put, I've picked my favourite aspects of the area, and combined them all together in a small OO gauge layout set during preparations for the D-Day landings.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!

Entries in this blog

Baseboard

Bramble's Boatyard - Baseboard Design - Pt.1

As many of you know, my modelmaking comes in fits and starts. On personal projects, that usually means 1 or 2 months of modelling a year, and that's it. On BRM projects, it is usually more consistent year-round, however, this year I've fallen behind by about 4+ months due to a myriad of reasons; S.A.D being a big part of it, but also struggling with a build that I initially thought would be straight-forward that turned out to be anything but! Instead of moving onto another project and coming bac
Layout Design

Bramble's Boatyard - Refining layout plans

Last blog entry, I showed a few of my latest designs - all drawn to scale; including one (BB12) which looked set to be, more or less, the final design. Throughout the comments on that post on RMweb, useful changes were suggested, and some implemented to form BB13. However, I'm going to skip straight to the later version (BB14), posting sketches and 3D designs, explaining what's good and what's bad, and explore ideas for further improvements, which will result in plans BB15 and BB15b Edit: And BB
Layout Design

Bramble's Boatyard - From 'flights of fancy' to actual scaled plans!

In recent months, whatever free time I can scrape together (which isn't much!) has been spent on continuing to draw plans for Bramble's Boatyard. As usual, I got carried away...   ...but believe it or not, I have finally forced myself to draw some plans... wait for it... to scale!     Yes, crazy isn't it - from what has been, by this point, years of 'flights of fancy', to actual workable plans! I've always known almost all of my previous plans would be optimistic
Research

Bramble's Boatyard - War in The New Forest

In this entry, I'll be exploring the role that the New Forest played in preparations for WWII, and specifically, D-Day - since that is the period I intend to base the layout on. To begin with, I have added a fair bit of stuff that isn't specifically relevant to the coast, where the layout is set; but at the very least, it helps give some perspective.   Timeline of the New Forest's role 1939 The role of the New Forest in WWII goes right back to the start; in fact, before the w
SouthernRegionSteam

SouthernRegionSteam in Research

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Research

Brambles Boatyard - The run-up to D-Day

Research is absorbing, and despite trawling through unnecessary information and photos that are of little use in terms of creating a model railway, in the case of D-Day, I felt it was important to understand the challenges faced, the enormity of the preparations, and the speed, yet precision, in which everything had to come together. Take, for example, the artificial 'Mulberry' harbours constructed in Normandy. I don't really need to see photos of what it looked like in use, I'll only be modelli
SouthernRegionSteam

SouthernRegionSteam in Research

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Layout Design

Bramble's Boatyard - It's D-Day! (Was "Coastguard Creek")

This entry was supposed to deal with an alternate history of the line/area (which had already been delayed for probably over a year - I had multiple directions I could take, and I wasn't sure which alternate timeline would tie in best with the layout because I hadn't got a firm layout design!)...   ...however, this past week, I'm happy to say that things have started to fall into place; thanks mostly to a request by BRM (British Railway Modelling) to photograph a particular layout at a
Inspiration

Coastguard Creek - Further inspiration & New Forest coastal industries

Inspirational locations further afield For one of the blog entries for Coastguard Creek, I shared a sketch montage of many inspiring (New Forest) locations. As promised at the time, I'm back with more; but this time  from locations elsewhere (albeit within 20 miles). Some sketches aren't quite as detailed as others due to being done at different times, but I still think it helps to give a broad sense of what I'm looking to reproduce, in some capacity:     As we did with
Layout Design

Coastguard Creek - A practical reapproach!

Last blog entry, I shared a generous serving of the hundreds of sketches that I've drawn for Coastguard Creek. There will be a few more here, but this time I'd like to focus on how important it can be when layout planning to stop sketching and think logically for a moment! Let me explain...   ...after months of relatively fruitless sketching, on New Years Eve I took a step back and remembered my mantra (which came about after numerous failed projects) of 'design for the space y
Layout Design

Coastguard Creek - 15 months of planning!

Hold on to your socks - this is going to be a lengthy one! (In fact it's so long, I've now split it into 2 separate posts - the next will be up soon...)   I think it's fair to say that you are all long overdue an update on Coastguard Creek. Due to other commitments, no real progress has been made since the last post way back in March 2021; almost 15 months ago! If anything, things went backwards for quite a while, as I kept finding more and more inspiring locations that I really wanted
Inspiration

Coastguard Creek - The Inspirational New Forest Coast

(With the usual apologies to those that have seen this on my external modelmaking blog) A few weeks ago, I decided to take a break from work-related projects, and dedicate some time to Coastguard Creek. Rather than work on a mock-up (as the studio is still in disarray), what actually ended up happening was that I spent a few days producing an information panel showing off inspirational locations across the New Forest coast! In all honesty, I'm not quite sure why I've drawn this, but if nothing
Layout Design

Taking on your feedback!

A huge thanks to those who have given me ideas; including users from Twitter, RMweb, and Blogger. I've been quite surprised by the positive feedback, and the suggestions made have all been taken on board and implemented into the next version. A special mention to those on RMweb for their photos in the previous entry of ship breaking and repair yards. @petethemole's selection of photos in particular have been incredibly helpful getting a taste for what such a site looked like, and how it function

Coastguard Creek - New layout | New Forest coast

The Location   Those who saw my previous entry know that I've been planning a new layout for a couple of months! I've finally settled on an idea that I think is very promising (and has already been approved by the "domestic authorities"!). And what better place to base it on than the New Forest, where I live. More specifically, on the coast (where I don't live, sadly!). The New Forest coast is very pretty, stretching from Ashlett Creek (Southampton Waterside), around Calshot Spit, to L
SouthernRegionSteam

SouthernRegionSteam

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