I’ve been thinking… now there’s a surprise!

The subject of my mental exercises?... How do I build and store a Funicular?

And, just as important, how do I transport it should anyone be foolish enough to want it at a show?

These questions were prompted by two things, first the acquisition of a new(ish) car, downsizing from a Mondeo to a Focus, and second, the sketch posted in my previous blog, which allowed me to more accurately predict the likely final dimensions of the beast which I estimate to be about 700mm high, with a dog-leg base nominally 400mm wide and about 1250mm long.

The combination of length and height in a protective box would not fit the into Focus and moving it in one piece round the house, perhaps (certainly?) in and out of the loft would be very difficult without damaging it.

I looked to Mikkel again for inspiration, I think it was he who posed the question (in a modelling context) “How do you eat an Elephant?”… A bit at a time! Could I follow his lead here? (and get somewhere near the quality of his work?)

Looking again at the earlier sketch, I thought that it could split into 6 or up to 8 separate sections to fit together 3-D jig-saw fashion.

The sections, I thought, would be-

1. A base board,

2. The lower cluster of buildings including the bottom station, and hopefully the cliff faces, built on a sub-base

3. The incline, including possibly the operating and control electrics, and including the cliff cutting faces either side of the tracks.

4. The pedestrian walkway approach, the top station and café, with its patio at a lower level. The construction, positioning and support of this item is causing considerable head-scratching! Again a sub-base is required , and the control electrics etc. could be included.

5. The two sloping areas either side of the incline representing the top of the cliff.

It may be that because of the height of the cliff face, and the sides to the track cutting, these would need to be separate sections, hence the possibility of up to 8 jig-saw pieces.

All the above would need positive location devices.

Additionally, plain protective / cosmetic sides would come at a very late stage I think, followed by any protective box. I do not propose to have a back-scene.

To examine the problems lurking in the above proposal, I decided to make a quarter size model of the model (i.e. at 1mm/ft scale) using card obtained from a well-known cereal packet, (if it's good enough for "Chubber" ........ ).

First, a card base to the size and shape outlined in the sketch in my previous blog, was cut and stiffened with edges and bracing. A card track-incline was added and located by paper-clips to allow a little adjustment.

Then a sub-base, also in card, representing the slope from road to station entrance of about 5ft.6” in the prototype. Allowance needs to be made for the fact that the track at its lowest point is about 4ft. below road level.

Card representations of the buildings were made and attached to the sub-base.

The foot-print of the upper station was cut and folded to the split-level shape of the prototype and supported by a card box.

Offering these sub-structures up to the base showed that some minor adjustments to its outline would be necessary in the 4mm/ft version, and, in a departure from normal practice, the baseboard would not be the first thing constructed.

Doing this model-of-a-model has also shown where more information is required to do this subject justice, so another site visit will have to be made.

Sorry about the quality of the pictures, playing with a new camera in very poor light this afternoon!

All this thinking is quite exhausting, ............. I'll go for a lie-down now........