Why Seahaven?
Entry posted by Paul Robertson
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Whitsun week in the 1980's for me as a child was always spent camping on the coast at the Warren in Folkstone in a blue canvas clad frame tent. Days would be spent watching the Sealink ferries arrive and depart from the harbour along with the obligatory trip to the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway and building massive sandcastles on the sandy beach, whilst at night I would go to sleep to the sounds of EMUs pounding along the Shakespeare Cliff coastal mainline (or rain on canvas!). My visits encapsulated the changeover from BR corporate blue to Network Southeast Sectorisation and the splitting off of Sealink from British Rail. I wasn't really aware of the Train Ferry just a few miles up the coast and never witnessed its operation first hand. But I enjoyed the atmosphere of the close proximity of boats and trains on our occasional walks in to Folkstone Town and past the Harbour Station where third rail emus would trundle past the fishmarket, over the harbour viaduct and into the curved platforms to await their dwindling number of international foot passengers off the grandly Nordic named Sealink ships. If I'd known now what interesting rail manoeuvres were taking place daily on the Western Docks with a free refreshing walk along admiralty pier to boot I think I could have persuaded my father to make an afternoon trip of it and clicked away a few shots with my kodak instamatic camera.
My interest in building a train ferry layout stems from these childhood memories and also a growing interest in freight traffic and why we as a country seem unable to get so much of it off our roads. I appreciate the 'market forces / financial viability' arguments but there seems something intrinsically right about railways moving freight (which is the reason why they were built). I was also really interested in speedlink and wagonload freight and having come across David Ratcliffe's book (see below) it inspired me to think in more detail about a possible layout including childhood memories and my interest in limited freight traffic.
Many iterations and plans were drawn up for grand loft layouts to model a whole working n gauge harbour but it quickly became apparent with a young family and lack of time and funds that such grandiose projects would have to be scaled down and so Seahaven was borne. Its primarily a shunting layout that works at 2.5 levels in n gauge and measures approximately 5ft by 1ft. the first 1.5 levels is a wagon shunting yard using a mock up of the rear end of Nord-pas-de-Calais as a fiddle yard connecting via a linkspan to the dockside, with a hidden storage yard off scene. Being new to n gauge and not having done any modelling since my teenage years I'm keeping it relatively simple and not going for movable linkspans or tidal effects! The 2nd level is the harbour station for third rail emus to trundle in and out from a connecting branchline through a suitably Shakespearean Cliff tunnel portal. As a suitably frustrated Civil Engineer I'm also enjoying detailing the structures and ensuring correct radii for roads, etc although I'm trying not to be too OTT on the detail, just want it to look and feel right.
I made a start over a year ago one christmas on the base boards although have been collecting suitable stock for a lot longer than that with birthday money being saved up. This summer with staycations happening I decided to spend a few days working on the layout a bit more and this is the current state of play:
As you can see still very much work in progress but gaining momentum now and really enjoying getting back in the railway modelling saddle! I'll try and keep this updated as much as possible as I add new stuff.
Thanks for reading
Paul
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