Welcome to my slow-moving blog of my slow-moving project.

My plan is model the station, goods and. I real yards of the Miidleton Branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, in 2mm scale, as close to prototype as is absolutely possible given the space, time and budget available.

Whilst I'm calling the an LYR project, I'm actually probably going to set it in 1924. This allow me the luxury of using some LMS stock, which should get things rolling quicker than trying to stick entirely to LYR. However, the permanent way, station and yards didn't change from about 1920 until their closure and deconstruction in the 1960's. Even the original LYR buffer stops were in use right to the end.

Slow moving. I mentioned slow moving a couple of times. That's by way of fair warning. I've been on this project for two years already, and so far, all I have to show for it is a pile of books and some ideas. And I'm quite happy with that as a rate of progress.

Another word of warning. I'm not really a railway enthusiast, and I've never had a model railway (well, not in the last 40 years or so). My background is really in scale midelling, and war games modelling. Something about the railway in my home town - which dies two years before my birth - has grabbed my imagination. I want to model it, more as an architectural and landscape subject, than as a railway subject. But my desire for fidelity in the modelling has forced me to investigate the world of railway modelling, because it would seem a bit perverse to build a model of a train station and yards, and not have running trains!

Of the two years spent so far, maybe four to six months have been spent in concerted effort to research the subject and the world of model trains. The rest has been 'distraction' into other areas (and distraction by work commitments). I'm hoping this can increase with new circumstances, but even at full tilt, progress will be exceedingly slow. Please don't expect weekly updates!

As I posted in a forum topic, I have a bit of a plan, and a few objectives. A shortened and modified version of those is:

Learn to use Templot well enough to reproduce the permanent way of the area in question;

Learn as much as possible about L&YR so I can setup Templot correctly;

Work out how much space I will have, and then figure how to make contractions to the layout without spoiling the prototypical appearance;

Once dimensions are settled, build the baseboards, and build a white card mockup to check everything looks ok;

Get building track, buildings, landscape etc

Somehow acquire/build suitable engines coaches and wagons.

So, as it happens, I'm off on hols for three weeks tomorrow, and I intend to be diving into that pile of books whilst I'm away. When I get back, I'll make another post that summarises my thoughts, and what information I have managed to glean.