When I planned "Wednesford" two things dictated the presentation of the layout: a desire to try and get decent curve radii, and some means of trying to reduce the amount of "dead space" taken up by the backstage fiddle yard.  The former led to me pushing the track to the back of the layout and working on an island station platform, and the latter, partly connected to the plan of a single bi-directional main through platform and a single bay, resulting in a plan to place scenery on one of the fiddle yard sidings.  One advantage of the railway being up against the shed wall is that you will view the station behind the adjacent town scenery, which is perhaps to my mind more realistic but I spotted a potential problem: I was planning to use DCC, in a shed, and as we DCC users know, you have to have absolutely spotless railheads and wheels to avoid stalling. With buildings and scenery in front of the track, and with cosmetic OHLE planned, I could see getting the track rubber onto the rail head might be an issue.  So, having laid out the rough town plan I had additional boards cut to specific lengths onto which the buildings would be affixed, so that I could temporarily remove them to gain access to the track more easily without knocking or damaging the buildings.  One happy side effect of this decision is it allows me to take a board and allocated scenic off the layout to work on in the house, plus in the future, if I decide to reconfigure the layout, I can easily slot in a new scenic module if I so wish.

So, having more or less completed the "Old Town" raised section which conceals an unavoidably tight curve near the shed door, I moved onto the "Civic Centre" scenic module.  A sheet of 9mm marine ply left over from the main baseboard works was cut to size, just long enough to accommodate Wednesford Borough Council's new Civic Centre, built on the site of the old goods shed destroyed in the Blitz and never rebuilt (in our fictional back story, the Borough Council and the BRB entered into a joint venture to redevelop the old railway lands, the bombed out "Low" or "New" town area around the ruins of St Florian's Chapel, which had been compulsorily purchased by the Corporation, and the site of the old engine shed which became the site for the new Technical College).  The post-war Town Plan saw the area adjacent the new lower station entrance being allocated mainly to a mix of civic and Government uses, including a new Civic Centre, Library, Courts complex, Police headquarters and Government offices.  The Civic centre would comprise a new public entrance off Station Approach, with a multi-storey office block alongside the railway, and a new Council Chamber, with shops and administrative offices forming a third side to a U shaped building.  In the centre there would be a raised square housing the town War Memorial and in front, a "Peace Garden" to commemorate the civilian deaths in the town during the Blitz.

Close up of the entrance, a Vollmer railway station, slightly modified with a partial repaint, and with interior, largely 3d printed.  I will be adding internal lighting on final installation, although I need to think about how to do it in order to allow ease of removal.

Wider view showing the 3d printed planter with the name of the Civic Centre on the right.  I'll probably replace the clock with a suitable coat of arms when I can find something on tatBay.

Overall layout.  The bare wood will be an area of grass-mat lawn with a large dove of peace sculpture in the middle, with flower beds, and there will be a pavement alongside the entrance building on the right, with visitor parking in front.  The 3d printed steps and wheelchair ramp leads up to where the war memorial will be located, in front of the main office block. The building on the left is the split level Council Chamber, with the "Members Terrace" modelled from the platform area of the original Vollmer station building.  The typical 1960s concrete bollards are a cheap eBay purchase.  The main Council offices are of course a Kibri 1970s kit repainted to match the two Vollmer stations.

The member's terrace and floral displays.  Four of the Council members having a chin-wag during a smoko break.

The section still needs some additional paving work, the War Memorial and Peace Garden, and possibly the visitor parking bays marking out on the left, but I have to say I'm quite pleased with how it has all turned out.

For the "fiddle yard" I've decided to have the track from the bay platform terminate in a single track, heavily rationalised "temporary" wooden station.  The back story is this was once a branch which linked Wednesford with Wombourne on the GWR Wombourne branch, a short lived by-pass line linking Stourbridge with the Shrewsbury to Wolverhampton line, which lasted just 40 years from 1925 to 1965 and which lost it's passenger service after just seven years in 1932. Those of you who know the Black Country will know that west of Dudley the GWR pretty much had a monopoly, so I decided that the "Wednesford" loop and branch over towards Gornal and on to Wombourne was a competitive strike by Euston to try and tap into the Earl of Dudley's extensive rail worked iron, coal and brick industries.  So, when Wombourne lost it's GWR station in 1932, the LMS branch to Wednesford became the only passenger service to the village, which clung on mainly because it served Gornal.  Slated for closure in 1965, pending a decision, BRB built a temporary wooden platform on the site of the closed goods yard to serve Wombourne, allowing the closure of a level crossing and signal box, and the sale of the station house and buildings.  Any similarity with Sheringham in Norfolk is purely intentional.  However, owing to a mistake in the closure proceedings and associated legal wrangles, the line was still chuntering away when WMPTE signed an agreement to underwrite local rail services and so ended up in a legal limbo.  The problem was the station was technically in Staffordshire, but the majority of users of the hourly bubble-car shuttle were from the West Midlands county, so the "temporary" wooden platform and dismal unstaffed shelter soldiered on for forty years whilst SCC refused to pay anything to upgrade it and WMPTE/Centro refused to pay for something over the border.

That's the back story.  It'll be an electrically separate single line running as a shuttle from the bay platform to the platform stood in a weed infested gravel goods yard with a backscene behind, a sort of minimal bookshelf working diorama of the kind of heavily rationalised, "crumbling edge of quality" stations that most enthusiasts hate, but I find actually quite atmospheric.  I've planned it as an electrically separately fed line to allow it to double up as a test and programming line without the need to remove any stock in the main fiddle yard.  The idea is the bubble cars will leave Wednesford bay, pass behind the scenic break, before emerging from behind a second break to run past the dismal, weed endowed goods yard--parking into the platform on a regular shuttle.  Which leads me to the other project I've been doing this week, Wombourne "platform"

The platform is a rather nice laser cut MDF platform kit from "Torri Laser" just up the road in Pigtown - sorry Mochdre, Conwy.  Mine arrived without instructions, I'm not sure if that was an oversight or if they are meant to be an intelligence test but I managed to get something together and work out the main structural components, with only a few details not applied as being un-necessary for my needs.  The kit comes with a more "steam era" wooden shelter and platform but I wanted something more modern, and the shelter came from an eBay seller in Northumberland, and is again laser cut MDF, which fits perfectly onto the platform.  The post and rail fence is genuine metal wire supplied with the platform kit.

You'll notice that the half of the platform on the right has holes.  Somehow I missed this when laying out the parts, it should have been joined by a similar piece I put on the back but should have been on the front left, to allow some additional detailing to be added.  Never mind.

At the moment I've left it "au naturel" but will probably weather it down once I start installation post track laying.

The complete length, which I estimate should just about accommodate a two car 57ft underframe DMU or a Sprinter with the cab door on the ramp.  To me it really captures the look of minimum service, minimum expenditure branch stations of the rationalisation era.  The parts all go together well, once you've worked out what goes where and being real wood has a wonderful feel.  Also, being made here in Wales was an added bonus for me.  With a Dapol 122 burbling in the platform waiting departure, surrounded by copious drifts of fireweed and scrubby undergrowth, I cant wait to get it installed and hopefully trigger some of those who think all model railways should be chocolate box fantasies of a mythical golden era.