Although the railway is predominantly a freight operation, I want to run a local passenger service between Fairport and Creg (map). This will be a diesel service, "runs when required", separate to the tram operations between Fairport and Shelf. I am hoping, the two passenger operations together will interfere with the freight in an engaging sort of way.

My trouble is this. In a way, I'd like a single-unit diesel railcar; if the layout was 00 I'd buy a bubble car and be happy. But the layout is H0, and I have got to build something. I can see two routes:

1) Build a single unit railcar for use at a high level platform

2) Build a railbus for use at a ground level platform

Fairport has platforms for either.

Option 1) might be a driving trailer from a DMU coupled to a shunter (like the operations at Mangapps) but it will need a conventional high level platform. Such a platform will prevent my MaK Di-8 (very wide) ever reaching the the quayside.

Option 2) looks like a railcar from a bygone age (the line is supposed to be set in 2012) but I have the parts to build something. The platform at Creg for this could be a patch of ground.

Fundamentally, this is the one decision which is stopping me from starting any more scenery on my main baseboard. I want to define the nature of Creg, and at the moment it can be anything from a tourist halt to a fuel dump. I suppose, one solution is to try to build two different trains and then choose. I've been thinking this through for too long and maybe I need to ask myself different questions?