After buying a couple of box files a few weeks back, I had to come up with something to put in them. Pondering on the matter (with some assistance from RMWeb) has led me to the conclusion that Victoria Quay in Leith is the ideal prototype. This has the advantage of track still being in situ (and can even be seen on Google Maps), along with original stonework, or at least similar to how it looked in the '50s. The downside is that most of the area is now occupied by the Scottish Government offices, which is also known as Victoria Quay. There are, however, original whisky bonds still there which were restored into rather pokey flats.
I'm not planning to directly model Victoria Quay as it was, but a fictional area of Quay adjacent to it. This allows me to experiment with the track a bit more and have a track leading into one of the buildings parallel to the up and down lines on the quay itself. I was thinking I might name it St Andrew's Quay after the Scottish Government headquarters on Calton Hill. It should be a fun little project anyway.
Obviously, I also need something to run on the quayside. I have, in my collection, a J94 and few Hornby Class 06s, but I'm not sure either of them is quite suitable for Leith. Luckily, a £20 Smokey Joe, a £10 Five-Plank Wagon, a pot of black paint, some tools and the right copy of Model Rail allow me to create a near prototypical Y9 with tender as ran on the real thing. There's a few pictures of the Y9s at Leith, 10097 in 1946 and 68092 in 1946, as well as the only surviving example of the Y9s (although similar private owner examples also exist) at Bo'ness.
All ready to go when I get some spare money and buy the track, plastikard and few extra tools.
Edit: Of interest to modern image modeller, coal trains continue to run to Leith Docks (the part that isn't shops and flats). I doubt there is much to model there however.