Introduction and early thoughts
Entry posted by whart57
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Many, many, years ago when the only colour on the covers of model railway magazines - or indeed inside them - was the title bar, and when the price was still in shillings, there was a series of articles describing an author's layout under the title "Fact and Fiction in Cheshire". It was a big layout covering LMS, GWR and LNER and the reason for the title was that the layout was both prototypical in operation and had freelance aspects in the form of connections and services that might have reasonably existed but in actual fact didn't. Over the years this "might have been" approach has proved popular and I have certainly sketched out ideas that were based on a tweak of the historical narrative.
Some ideas I have had for SE&CR themed layouts have involved lines that were only mooted actually being built, such as an SER branch from Chilham to Faversham, to lines that were built but not in the historical way, such as musing that the independently promoted Leatherhead to Horsham line was snapped up by the SER (whose line to Reading crosses it near Dorking) instead of falling into the hands of the Brighton and thus Horsham had an SER terminus as well as its LBSCR junction station. The wildest ideas involved a mediaeval storm scouring out the Wantsum and thus in the 1840s, Reculver being an important port worthy of a line from Ashford.
None of those ideas advanced much beyond the sketch book phase, though I do have a photocopy of an 1840s 25" to the mile OS map of Horsham on which I pencilled in a diversionary route from Warnham to my SER terminus on what was then the edge of town. The reason for doing that was to identify potential buildings to include in the scenery and thus to fix the location of my fictitious station. Facts in other words to sustain a fiction.
To some extent the driver was to create a model which meant something to me, and if I didn't like the real railway that was there or if it was impractical to model that, then create an alternative fiction. Thus, because I wanted a light railway and I wanted it set in my locality, I dreamed up another part of the Colonel Stephen's empire called the North Sussex Railway that meandered from somewhere near Horsham to the mainline at Gatwick Racecourse. And I actually started building this. I didn't finish it but a friend took the part-built layout off my hands, borrowed the stock I had built for it, and did a lot more work on it. I believe it was exhibited at the Beckenham show this last weekend - its third outing.
I have continued the idea of building what I like - fact - and linking it together through some fiction, to my present layout. This is still under construction and will be for some years - it is after all my retirement project - and I hope to report progress in this blog from time to time. However, to give an example of this fact and fiction melange, let's consider a branch of Starbucks
The fact is that this branch of that Seattle coffee chain is real, and also that I personally have consumed many coffees, croissants and frappacinos there, usually while perusing their copy of the Bangkok Post or using their wifi to read the online version of the Guardian. It's also a fact that it is an interesting building well worth making a model of. The unfortunate fact is that it is not by a railway line, it is not even close to a railway line.
However it is on a main road, and main roads frequently run alongside railway lines. So my model will sit just in front of the backscene on a similar road to the one it is on, except that on the other side of the road is the railway and not some hotel/apartment complex. The railway tracks are also based on a real location and have, in reality, a road running alongside. Just a different road.
On that particular road is a location where I snapped a scene I would like to include on the layout
That should be possible. However the facts now need to have a fiction to tie them together. The building under construction here is an extension to the Siriraj Hospital, and its construction required the closure of the Thonburi terminus on the Chao Phraya river and the renaming and upgrading of Bangkok Noi halt to becoming the new Thonburi station. That closure and relocation did actually make it possible to fit a decent representation of the factual trackwork of the present Thonburi into the space I have available, but I don't want to stick to the factual because that means I can't include my flights of fancy. A fictitious station then. How this fiction fits into the factual State Railway of Thailand is something for a later blog. For now though I have a Bangkok terminus with locomotive servicing facilities but just a shack for the station building and a line that clearly went further at one time. All pretty close to the factual Thonburi. On the other side of the road though is not the Bangkok Noi canal but a street from the other side of the city. Will this merging of fact and fiction work? Well I hope so.
In the meantime construction of Starbucks proceeds
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