Kyle

HNY all!

New Year - New Project! 
 

Well...not quite yet...am 100% committed to completing Wenford dries first...however there has been an idea long in my mind to recreate my 2FS extract of Kyle in 7mm scale. Strange you may think to recreate an identical layout in a different scale...well, Ian Futers, long a hero of mine has done it with Lochside I recall (P4 - 7mm) and for me it gives the perfect excuse to run a blend of passenger, parcels and freight, all short trains.

The idea first came about more than 10 years ago when I was living in BCN. Eager to toe dip in the senior scale (after all, I was the good side of 50 then ) I purchased a Lima class 33, a PMP conversion kit to make a class 26/27 and three Lima S/H passenger coaches. Said items all resided in the gloat box and were surpassed when the Dapol 08 arrived along with a few hoods...which eventually made it to my now in progress extract of Wenford Dries. So called extracts as I choose a prototype and then due to space extract the ingredients to try and capture a sense of time and place of the area.

Regular follows also know of my obsession with IKEA Lack shelves as baseboards, again something that came from BCN in 2007. Kyle in 7mm has been mapped out many times on different lack shelf templates, 1100mm long and 1800mm long as I enjoy the constraints they bring (Wenford uses 2 x 1100mm shelves) However even back then I realised that the 260mm width would just not capture the scene, only the track. The dock side harbour edge and the platform/station building in relief would need to be added to the width.

Fast forward to now and my need to look beyond Wenford as a layout project. Coupled with the re-release of the Heljan classes 26 and 27 and a preordered Heljan 37/4 which I will tell you more about another time  

Mojo was low the last few months, so after a reread of some Ian Futers layout articles I dusted down the project to start pre planning. Current thinking is it needs a Scenic board circa 2m long and the same for the Fiddleyard, probably custom made. This would allow a 37/4 and three coaches. I also have a backup option using IKEA 1800mm boards although with this 7mm stuff it’s hard to manoeuvre them around the apartment...1100mm just about doable on my own.

The lengths were first worked out using rough templates drawn over Wenford in pen on tracing paper. Here’s where the Lima stuff comes in use again to gauge train lengths. When you see the Lima Mk I’s think Heljan, Dapol or Darstead and when you see the 33 think Heljan 26/27  

Following this I drew this in CAD approximately using dimensions based on Wenford but increased in width. Here I have flipped the layouts showing options of either side and also 2000mm and 1800mm board/shelf versions.