In one of my entries the next question was asked:

“Job, a serious question - do you plan these dioramas over time or just see a scene in your mind's eye in an instant?”

To be honest there was no planning when I started with the building of Bridge Street. I just wanted to build a layout on which I could shuffle around with a shunting loco and some wagons. A single line from a “fiddle stage” to an industry using wagon cards and wagon bills. Because me lack of knowledge about the shunting practice of British Railways in the 1950’s I made a crucial design mistake. But Bridge Street was fun to build and for me my first steps in card modeling.

Bridge Street junction Station Road with goods line in front

As I described before after finishing it was covered with a plastic sheet and out of sight. After that I build Nice Street in an APA-box situating it in Northall, without any planning. Just to see if I could build a convincing diorama this way.

Nice Street main scene

Northall Dock is build, because some people, wanted to see something with water in my next diorama.

But the above question was the impulse of some serious thinking about what do I want to build more. In this way the development of Northall will be more consistent.

On internet I found I nice document from a Great London area with a description of local areas in a borough. I used those description as a starting point for the design of the Northall Diorama’s. This can be quite challenging when I have to translate this to a diorama in an APA-box.

For my next diorama I made this description:

Predominant Land Use: Commercial (shops under arches), shops and residential buildings

Townscape:

The site is bounded on by a through road and an arched railway embankment.

Station Street is the main route through the area for both vehicles and pedestrians

Scale and Setting:

Commercial transport corridor from the east to the west. Garage.

Building Types/Uniformity of age and styles:

Most of the buildings are shops and residential buildings.

So I made a schematic plan for my Northall Diorama’s:

As you can see my next diorama will be Station Road. Situated between Bridge Street and Nice Street. This line is situated on the arches in Northall and mainly used for passenger traffic. The other line to Northall Dock is a single goods traffic line only.

On Station Road there are some shops under the railway arches. I have found a nice urban social theme from the late 1950’s that I want to use. ( Sorry, I will not give that away yet.)

Regards,

Job

PS. I have also to make some serious thoughts how to store so much diorama’s or thinking about an other solution.