The Flat Earth Theory
As we all know, the Earth is anything but flat but a flat earth is quite a common sight on our models. Now it's pretty obvious that Hayle North Quay has some high ground at the back and a quay edge at the front, but is that the whole story? Well, no...
A couple of examples from my visit in 2010 (the place has been completely rebuilt since then to provide flood defences).
I'm not sure what this building used to be, possibly stables for the Steam Packet hotel or possibly something else. In theory this is on the flat part of the quay, but look at the ground line.
The wagon weighbridge (in its original position) - pretty flat here but look in the distance - the road (and inset rail track) are climbing up to enter the former Octel bromine works site. In the 1950s this gradient was used for gravity shunting.
The problem (for me) is knowing how much level change is enough. While puzzling over this I looked again at my many photos and found a little corner of a photo of one of the other quays which showed North Quay in a helpful way...
So roughly speaking, the rear of the 'flat' part of the quay is higher than the quay edge by about the height of a car (A40?). I guesstimate about 5 feet.
The bigger conundrum for me was to figure out how a small patch of ground in front of the Octel works 'fits together' from a height perspective. These level changes are less subtle but I found them quite difficult to figure out. A couple of snippets from 'Britain From Above'...
Towards the rear of this little scene we have the rail line up to the Octel works... which is uphill but only up a railway kind of hill plus a non-too-steep ramp from the road back down to quay level at the end of the detached cottage. All quite subtle but on the other hand the two semi detached cottages have a retaining wall at one end which is is almost a full storey high and has earth to the top of it on one side and the ground level is similarly high where it meets the inclined front wall of the detached cottage.
Now maybe it's just me but I couldn't make all of this fit together in my head... and also factor in some selective compression. In the end I decided that building a scenic mockup of the patch of ground and the incline to the Octel works was the only way to figure it all out. The mockup sits on an old piece of laminate flooring and is all done with cheap card, cerial boxes and Templot printouts. I didn't have any suitable 'ground' material to hand so I took a trip down to my local Hobbycraft and a bag of air drying clay was about the cheapest thing that seemed like it would do the job. It was quite fun to do - sticking extra bits on here and there or carving bits off and easily smoothed over with a dampened finger, screwdriver blade or an old butter knife. Have I got it right? I don't know but it doesn't look too far from what I see in the Aerofilms photos.
What still puzzles me a bit is why they didn't just dig more of this ground out instead of building retaining walls and leaving it piled up against their back walls to cause damp. I have a theory but will leave this as an exercise for the reader.
Wot, no tractor?
Actually the tractor is part of this story because it will hopefully drive along the road and negotiate that ramp in order to get to the other end of its train. Using the info from the scenery mockup, I worked out how much extra 'padding' the ramp would need and added a functional but rather less scenic balsa wood ramp to the tractor test bed...
I'm not sure how long the clay will take to air dry - it's had several hours so far and isn't showing any signs.
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