Grand Designs

[Ruston]

Having recently cleared two skips worth of junk out of the garage the way is now clear for planning another layout. This time I have 11ft. 6ins. to play with for the scenic section, plus fiddle yard/off-scene.

 

I've currently got two ideas for the grand design...

 

The first is a multi-industry layout; a sort Trafford Park Estate meets the Silvertown Tramway thing.

 

Starting at the far left is a scrapyard with roadside running and a level crossing to an oil/fuel depot. Below the "main line" is a depot for the estate company locomotives and to the right is a large warehouse or engineering works with the fiddle yard off stage, right.. The period would be 1950s/1960s, allowing BR rolling stock and company steam and diesel industrial locomotives.

 

The second is a bit different from my usual period of modelling and is an enlarged version of one of the ideas I had for a small/Cameo layout.

 

The region is a bit vague but possibly somewhere around Elland/Halifax and the mine produces coal and fireclay. The upper right track comes in from the fiddle yard on an upward gradient and trains are run around and run up  the lower line, which climbs to a headshunt, where they reverse on the climb to the mine. It's all countrified and will give a good long run of around 26ft. from entry onto scenic section to arrival at the mine. There could even be another switchback just before the mine that goes off-scene on the assumption of another mine being served.

 

The period will be about 1920 so the mine is small, with wooden headstocks and the motive power is all small 0-4-0 saddletanks (Pecketts, Manning Wardles, Black Hawthorns)

 

I cannot make my mind up which to go for. The first one allows a lot of my existing stock to be used and, being a later period, allows diesels, period motor cars and lorries etc. All of which I like. The second one rules out all of the above but I like the idea of something less urban-industrial and the idea of dumb-buffered contractors type wagons and small old wheezing saddletanks charging up steep gradients with just 3 or 4 wagons.

 

Decisions decisions...

Edited September 27, 2017 by Ruston

[chriscleveland]

Will this be oo or o gauge?

Edited September 27, 2017 by chriscleveland

[Corbs]

I rather like the split level one, if your wagons are heavily weighted it may be a good challenge to get the locos blasting up the bank!

[Regularity]

Build one, on top of storage space, and when you get bored with it, put it in the storage space, and build the other. Swap ad infinitum.

 

This changes your dilemma from, "Which do I build?" to, "Which do I build first?"

[5050]

There's 2 sides to your garage Dave.  Build both!

 

I like them both but the second one does seem to have more scenic and operating potential - and could be run in both periods without much difficulty.

[Stubby47]

I rather like the split level one, if your wagons are heavily weighted it may be a good challenge to get the locos blasting up the bank!

 

 

... the second one does seem to have more scenic and operating potential - and could be run in both periods without much difficulty.

 

I agree with both of these posts - the 2nd one has much more 'fun' factor.

[Ruston]

Will this be oo or o gauge?

It will be OO

[Corbs]

Dave, here's a curveball (easily ignored). Have you thought about a different kind of layout, rather than a supplier or source (as you have done with the output sidings at Nant Y Mynydd, River Don and White Peak), you could model a way of tying all three layouts together so they can be operated as one whole? Like a set of exchange sidings? Where trains arrive and get broken up to distribute to each of the locations, or maybe coal gets taken from Nant to River Don, then steel carried away from River Don, etc.?

[Ruston]

Dave, here's a curveball (easily ignored). Have you thought about a different kind of layout, rather than a supplier or source (as you have done with the output sidings at Nant Y Mynydd, River Don and White Peak), you could model a way of tying all three layouts together so they can be operated as one whole? Like a set of exchange sidings? Where trains arrive and get broken up to distribute to each of the locations, or maybe coal gets taken from Nant to River Don, then steel carried away from River Don, etc.?

Thanks for the idea butI can't see how that can work to be honest. They were only ever designed to be self-contained railways and all three are dead end track layouts with each baseboard being of a different depth. With two of them having the hidden sidings at the same end it would be very difficult to link them all together to be able to run as one.

 

The main thing agaist this idea is that I want to build something completely new for this project.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Ruston

[LBRJ]

Big vote for the second one here - I like the Rural Industry aspect of it a lot; and the plan looks different to the norm but workable.

[Barclay]

I think I'll have to go against the flow and vote for the industrial estate. Wild Swan's book on the Slough Estates railway is full of evocative pictures. 20's and 30's architecture, pipe gantries running over the road, loco's squeezing between parked cars. Almost enough to make me start again!