Wednesday 18 January became the official start date of Horsham MRC's Chesworth project. That night there was a presentation - a complete Powerpoint jobbie beamed onto the wall with one of those computer driven projectors - to the whole club membership, and the following Wednesday work started in earnest.

(Horsham club meet on what are called "short Wednesdays" and "long Wednesdays" in St Leonard's Church Hall in Horsham. Short Wednesday meetings are from 7pm to 10pm (clear up starts around 9.30) but on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays the meeting starts at 2.30pm and it at these "long Wednesday" meetings that most layout work is done.)

The first long Wednesday projects on Chesworth concentrate on stock-building. Chesworth is intended to be set in the period from 1925-30, chosen as being a century before when the layout is aimed at being on the exhibition circuit, so rolling stock needs to be suitable for that period. It is amazing how much "steam era" freight stock available as RTR is therefore unsuitable. About half the kits available as PECO Parkside or from other kit-makers are from the post-1930s period too. However the first batch of wagon kits have been sourced and constructions started.

The keenest constructors are the club's youngest members, which is heartening to say the least. Warhammer seems to be providing the early learning experience in the same way as Airfix did for the retirement generation. Photos of the results will appear in a later posting.

Trackplans and Baseboard Design

Your blog-writer has got to grips with Templot. The result has been to turn the outline Anyrail plan shown in the introductory blog into a working document that can be printed actual size. Templot also breaks the link to commercially available geometry which may or may not be a good idea. The purpose of the initial proof of concept layout is to test whether British Finescale's Finetrax kits can be used simply as crossings and switches. Elsewhere on rmweb there are postings from people who have done that but we need to try that for ourselves before over-committing to that approach. Currently the Templot plan looks like this:

Turnouts are either A5 or B7 and there are no complexities such slips or diamonds. To begin with though only one of each will be required and the A5 in the yard of the small passing station has been deliberately kept as a divergence from a straight track as a familiarity test before attempting to put a curve through the neighbouring B7. Your blogger has worked with Wayne Kinney on developing the Finetrax range for 3mm finescale so there is a high degree of confidence in that product.

The plan is also to use open frame baseboard construction. The scenic treatment requires some streams and rivers so although there will be no gradient changes other than the one required for gravity shunting, the ground to the side of the tracks will have to go both down and up. A flat baseboard is therefore unsuitable. A design has been drawn up for the framing of the first two boards.

Next stop the timber yard

Buildings

For the proof of concept layout we will require three buildings. The station building will be based on Bodiam (K&ESR). This has the advantage that it is still standing and is accessible thanks the the K&ESR heritage line. It is also an easily recognisable Stephens design. Outside the station, and forming a place for the eye to rest and stop continuing into the fiddleyard will be a country pub. The plan is to recreate the Dog and Bacon which is on the edge of the last little handkerchief sized bit of Horsham Common, and close to the junction with the real Wimblehurst Road which will be the station name on the layout. The difference is that our pub will not be the Edwardian pebble-dashed pub of today but the row of three wooden cottages that held the pub in earlier years. A Wealden hall house style farmhouse is also desired, but at the moment no suitable candidate has been settled on.

Work on Bodiam has already started, and drawings for the Dog and Bacon are being prepared.

Lastly

An idle conversation led to the suggestion that a coal merchants steam lorry might look good in the goods yard next to some guys bagging up a heap of coal dumped from a wagon. By coincidence a member saw an unbuilt Keil-Kraft kit at a swap-meet a weekend or two later, parted with a couple of coins and then put it together.

That prompted another member to recall his grandfather had actually driven one of these in the 1920s for a local coal merchant. So all is looking good.