Adrian, thanks for the pictures and references. I have seen one of the pictures of the Crown and I'm aiming to pose a pony and trap on the road outside on my layout.
I set off building part off the station in the 2011 diorama challenge to refresh my modelling skills in OO. I have been modelling American N gauge for nearly 20 years.
I have built card mock ups of most of the buildings mainly to get an idea of the space and scale area required but I have been forced into 9 feet by about 23 inches excluding the fiddle yard by the household authorities.
I have got all the features of the track layout except I put a kink around the position of the water tower to ensure I could fit the back siding. Like you I view from the goods yard side.
I have also used electrical switches for my point operating system, positioned at the front of the board in line with the points they are linked with 2mm dia aircraft control rods, fed through electric terminal blocks for support and linked to the point with fine rod. I use the DPDT switch to change the frog polarity on my electrofrog points. I use some insulfrog points but wired specially for DCC use and apart from one locomotive that shorts on the Y point occasionally I have no problems with stalling at low speed.
On the subject of track I am using Peco Code 100 because it is what I was given 3 years ago with a Hornby Schools class. I know the track isn’t “Finescale” but I will have to live with it. I have been made redundant since starting this layout and I now seem to be too old to get a job but I am too young to retire so I am penny pinching anywhere that I can in my construction. To this end I will be using card for a lot of my buildings. The granary is being constructed with brick paper that I have printed myself and mounted on layers of cereal packet.
I started the water tower with a Dapol/Airfix kit, cutting it down to size and shape and making girders from Plastruct. I will add some pictures when I can get my camera to function in the macro mode .
I am using the signal box that I made as an experiment for the diorama challenge but I will be rebuilding some of it particularly the steps. You can see it on the 2011 challenge pages: A Twig off a Southern Branch. I also built a working model of the Prescott Railmobile for the challenge.
More to follow when I can get my pictures downloaded. Having trouble posting them on here.
Regards
Andrew