Bosmelin will be a railway in a landscape. The track layout will be laid on a spine of baseboards with the main scenic sections added around it in a jigsaw manner. This has several advantages regarding space, manoeuvrability, weight, access and so forth. The visual experience is crucial and the jigsaw enhances this by avoiding continuous join lines. Joins being disguised by field hedges and banks for example in a random pattern.

To evaluate how large the spine boards need to be and how they need to be arranged – the track alignment is not straight – I am building a mock up of one section.

At Boscarne the B&WR was built on a ‘shelf’ above the river thus the hillside rises behind the line and falls away quite steeply to the valley floor in front of it.

Thus the spine boards will be open topped construction. The known unknown I face is how wide these boards need to be as there will be the start of the scenery each side of the tracks.

The mock up will hopefully demonstrate how things will appear. I’ve used 5mm Foamboard (Hobbycraft) in a gider style for this fixed together with PVA and Solvent Free Grab adhesive (Screwfix).

Here is a picture of the first stages of construction.