The greatest layouts you never built (and perhaps now never will!)

[Captain Kernow]

I'm sure that most of us like planning and researching new layout ideas. It's a great way of passing the time (when perhaps we should be concentrating on finishing existing modelling projects), maybe something to natter about at the club or down the pub. Backs of envelopes or beer mats are ideal for sketching out such plans, whether realistic and feasible or purely fanciful or perhaps a bit of both.

 

Sometimes such ideas and plans result in actual layouts, that end up being operated, perhaps exhibited and giving pleasure to the builder, operator and viewers alike.

 

But equally many of us must have planned layouts that for one reason or another, have never come to fruition. These might have been be large, expansive affairs or compact cameos but can often be classed as 'grand designs', the 'layout of a lifetime’, probably requiring much space and needing a lot of time and money to see the light of day. Such layout plans may persist (in one's mind or even on the back of a collection of beer mats) for quite some time, perhaps getting modified and expanded upon, as new ideas or even flashes of inspiration come to us from time to time.

 

But there comes a time, maybe many years down the line, when you realise that your 'grand design' is probably never going to happen. So why is this? Why do such layouts never get beyond the planning (or even the discussion in the pub) stage?

 

As regards my own experience, modelling interests can change over time and even if they didn't, life and the real world sometimes have a habit of getting in the way. 

 

Of course, what may be a 'grand design' to some could be considered a modest, eminently achievable project for others. A matter of personal perspective, perhaps.

 

 

Combe Down - the layout that never was

 

My 'grandest design', which I planned in my head for a few years but never built, was probably 'Combe Down'.

 

When the Somerset & Dorset Railway built the 'Bath Extension' from Evercreech Jct to Bath, most of the line was initially single track, including the two notorious tunnels to the south of Bath. The company was eventually taken over by the Midland Railway and L&SWR and became the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway and the new owners set about installing double track over much of the route.

 

The section through Devonshire and Combe Down tunnels, however, was initially seen as too costly to double, so the plan was to bring the double track up from the south to a point just before Combe Down Tunnel, where it would become single again. A short distance beyond the southern portal of Combe Down Tunnel is Tucking Mill Viaduct, which was re-built with a double line formation, the double to single junction presumably planned between the viaduct and the tunnel mouth.

 

A station was also mooted at this location, to serve the (relatively) nearby village of Combe Down.

 

In the end, the double track never extended beyond Midford Viaduct (again probably due to the expense of the engineering work) and no station was ever built serving Combe Down.

 

I always thought that 'Combe Down' would make a great layout, so I planned a roundy-roundy layout, featuring two-platform station between the viaduct and the tunnel, where north-bound trains could be held (as they were to the south of Midford in real life), waiting for the passage of a south bound working. There would be a small goods yard (small, by virtue of the very limited topography). I would have modelled the tunnel portal and would have tried to fit in the viaduct as well.

 

Double-heading of heavy summer expresses was commonplace on the S&D and I was thinking of some kind of sound system, where the distant sound of a double headed train, being worked hard against the grade, could be heard from afar, gradually becoming louder as the train got nearer, so that by the time the train appeared from the cutting to the south of Tucking Mill Viaduct, the full sound effects could be heard and the express would sweep majestically across the viaduct, through the station and disappear into the stygian gloom of the 1.25 mile long Combe Down Tunnel.

 

In the end, I never had the space or the time to build such a (for me) grandiose scheme and 'Engine Wood' was perhaps the closest I ever got to achieving it. Since then, my modelling interests have strayed away from the S&D, so I doubt that I will ever built 'Combe Down'.

 

 

 

So, what 'grand designs' have you conceived, but never (or not yet) built?

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Captain Kernow

[F-UnitMad]

I've a few "never built/never will" layout plans, none of them massive Empires though.

After a visit to Holland in 1997 I've always liked the idea of a Minories-style Dutch terminus station, to run those lovely blue & yellow NS DMUs on, "Whalebacks" & "Koploppers", not to mention the Class 1600 & 1700 electrics, which looked great in NS colours, but I wouldn't look twice at as SNCF machines! Space & cost of EU model trains always meant it would never happen for me.

Other layouts are ones I would like to have copied - two were built by 'Model Trains' Editor Chris Ellis; the 'Warren Branch', 3ft x 2ft American N gauge, and 'Western Mining Co', 2ft x 2ft, an 009/HOe layout. Both were ideal for 'dabbling' in scales not one's main interest. I did model in US N gauge years ago but had more room and longer, more modern stock than the Warren Branch was designed for. As for narrow gauge I just feel it's a novelty that would eventually wear off, so again it'll never happen. I looked at the recent R-T-R 009 model locos now coming up and my main reaction was "HOW much???"!!!

The other layout was "Red Wing Division", an HO scale 8ft x 4ft layout built by Model Railroader magazine staff, years ago. The fact it used Soo Line locos attracted me; space for a 'Sacred Sheet' prevented me, as well as the fact that on closer inspection the track plan has a few operational shortcomings as well.

I now model mainly in American O Scale, and am very happy with the layout I have, partly because I put a lot of thought into the trackplan, & also what I wanted to acheive operationally within my available space (17ft x 8ft). I don't waste time wishing for more space because as far as I can see I'll never have more, now, so I make the most of what is there.

 

Edit:- as my British interests focus mainly on the Forest of Dean & it's railways, there is a certain wonderful O Scale layout on here I am very jealous of, and would love to own myself. No names, though, but I bet some can guess!! 🤫😉😁

Edited December 24, 2022 by F-UnitMad

[sir douglas]

Arthur Heywood's Duffield bank, 15 inch private railway, just across the river from Duffield station, north of Derby. the main line loop is about 1400ft long in a woodland on the valley side with the shed and workshop down by the house connected by a 1 in 12 horse shoe.

 

map

 

horse shoe

 

Heywood's first loco "Effie" on the wooden trestle

 

Surviving tunnel (this is private land i got this photo from a website of somebody that explored the woods with permission)

 

 

 

Loco shed, the one on the left has just been finished and will soon go to Eaton hall

 

The biggest loco "Muriel" 0-8-0 articulated, so it rode like a 2-4-2, it is now "River Irt" on the R&ER

 

though this one is just a plain seated carriage, Heywood also had a dining car and sleeping car which the children often stayed in when rooms in th ehouse were needed for guests staying over

 

to do it in O9 (7mm scale) and to size, it would have to be about 35ft long and about 6ft wide and thats just for the main loop without the branch

[Stubby47]

Chacewater to Newquay. 

 

With all the intermediate halts and stations,  and including the branch to Treamble.

Yes, I've had a bash at both Shepherds and Treamble, but neither accurately. 

 

Space required - a large barn with the single line snaking back and forth.

 

Time & money required - ha, not a chance for either.

 

But I can dream...

[Red Devil]

Was on the way with it, pre internet days....(or at least pre my internet days)

Royston Vasey in N....based on Hadfield track was down, scenery well underway. Stock quite a bit built, Cenpro EM1s (remember them?).

 

I'd done a full loft conversion for it, then it was dismantled.

 

House move, then a divorce and a loss if interest put paid to that....Can't even remember what I did with baseboards, stock went to fund help fund deposit on next house, I think I did quite well gaining custody of my clothes and 'our' debts in the divorce.....!

 

Can't see me ever going back to N and now whilst maintain an interest in all things GC/MSW electrics can't see me ever replicating it.

[Not Jeremy]

Oh that's easy, another colliery, more detailed than the last one....

 

But then there was also once and very nearly GMORP....

 

 

The Greater Marshcastle Orbital Project, of course....

 

 

Seasons Greetings to all doodlers and dreamers!

Edited December 24, 2022 by Not Jeremy
moving Marshcastle

[Allegheny1600]

When I used to live in my parents house which was quite large and had a substantial garden, in the south west of France no less, I used to dream of “one day” building two decent sized sheds, one at each end of the garden and connecting the two sheds with a LOT of Peco 00 track! The two sheds would have been approximately 180 metres apart and separated by a vertical drop of about 10 meters, so I worked out that I would need a couple of spirals or loops of some kind.

Either shed would probably have been some sort of homage to Paddington and Penzance albeit on a “Sundown and Sprawling” fashion. I was only a teenager!

Come the age of 18 and I had returned to England to live on my own and presently my attention turned to American style layouts in H0 rather than 00 with maroon, green and blue diesels.

Now, I have inherited the house in France but there is now a slight problem with me going to live over there - in that it’s no longer possible.

[298]

I've not built Camden Road in 4mm/1990s era, although I had most of the stock for a club project. I then didn't build Shap, but probably didn't have room for it anyway. I started the Hershey Cuban layout about ten years ago but probably didn't do too much after 2016 until last year, and it was a rush to finish it for it's debut in September.

 

In 2023 I probably won't be making a start on Bunyola in Majorca although the viaduct is the next layout project. I also need to re-route the garden railway after it was severed by the Summerhouse. 

 

In terms of what my magnum opus would be if I had unlimited space, if still rather have a few smaller layouts instead of one larger one, but it'd probably still be the whole Yakima Valley -YVT, as it's still one or two trains running at a time and what's the point in having a massive layout that takes a dozen people to operate?

[298]

1 hour ago, sir douglas said:

Arthur Heywood's Duffield bank, 15 inch private railway, just across the river from Duffield station, north of Derby. the main line loop is about 1400ft long in a woodland on the valley side with the shed and workshop down by the house connected by a 1 in 12 horse shoe.

 

 

 

Have you seen the model in the Ratty museum?

 

[Dagworth]

A couple of years ago I would have said Ipswich, but then life changed and I found myself with a lot more space so Ipswich is now very much a live project. That leaves at least three dream projects, Derby Road (Ipswich), Maryland on the GE mainline, and Alstone Lane level crossing (Cheltenham) all of which I imagine being able to share one common fiddle yard. 
 

Andi

[08221]

I've wanted a senior scale layout since I started railway modelling over 50 years ago. Got a Dapol 08, a Heljan Rat and a few wagons and some track this year so going to build an O gauge micro layout next year called Bletchley Cambridge sidings.

 

Decided my OO modelling future also lies in micro layouts so going to sell my OO SF layout and build more micros based around Bletchley to go with my current exhibition micro Bedford St Giles. 

 

Always good in life to have targets and aspirations 🙂

[Dagworth]

1 hour ago, F-UnitMad said:

After a visit to Holland in 1997 I've always liked the idea of a Minories-style Dutch terminus station, to run those lovely blue & yellow NS DMUs on, "Whalebacks" & "Koploppers", not to mention the Class 1600 & 1700 electrics, which looked great in NS colours, but I wouldn't look twice at as SNCF machines! Space & cost of EU model trains always meant it would never happen for me.

What is a Whaleback please? Just asked a Dutch train driver who doesn’t know it and it doesn’t appear on a list of Dutch rail nicknames  

 

Andi

[sir douglas]

34 minutes ago, 298 said:

 

Have you seen the model in the Ratty museum?

 

 

no, i havent yet ever been to the R&ER

[F-UnitMad]

27 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

What is a Whaleback please? Just asked a Dutch train driver who doesn’t know it and it doesn’t appear on a list of Dutch rail nicknames  

 

Andi

These:-

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_VIRM

No idea now where I saw or heard the Whaleback nickname, though. 🙄🤦‍♂️

[PhilH]

Mine was the great layout in the loft, 19’ x 12’, squashed figure of eight centring on a through station with associated goods facilities and engine shed (which still survives on a current layout after being crudely chopped out and nailed onto other bits and bobs to form a no cost and mostly recycled lockdown build trainset), the other bits being a fiddle yard and a branch bit.

 

The whole premise was to watch Bulleid pacifics  thunder through the station with ten on complete with suitable ambient sound recordings. The project foundered on the fact that the loft was too hot/ too cold and, after a domestic breakdown, too insular to be enjoyed. The legacy is that I have a mass of locos and rolling stock which will appear on eBay at some point, I did go a bit mad with the credit card !

 

[TheSignalEngineer]

Having know it during its last few years of freight I always fancied doing a model of the Harborne branch. It will never get built now but I till have a sketck I prepares for the connection to the Mitchells and Butlers branch at Rotton Park Road. It may get done if I am lucky enough to live another 25 years'

 

My real big ideas had two alternatives. The first was that the LSWR got through from the Wadebridge area to Newham at Truro and had a joint station with the West Cornwall Railway there. The line tried to attract traffic from the GWR in the China Clay area. It would be transported to a new deep water port near Falmouth. My second option on that line was at station called Indian Queens where it crossed the GWR line to Newquay. It would have a connecting incline line between the GWR and LSWR and a mineral railway branch towards St Dennis. Sadly it would have needed a large barn and an evel larger fortune to build.

[sncf231e]

2 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

"Whalebacks" & "Koploppers"

"Dubbeldekkers" & "Koplopers" in Dutch.

Regards

Fred

[New Haven Neil]

Well I had a baseboards-and-track stage Bath green Park running into a continuous run layout 14 feet square back in Geordieland, then....NHS Management stress killed my mojo stone dead.  It all got binned, and a small US layout filled one wall in the room for a few years, then we ran away from the UK to Fraggle Rock and less stress.

 

The US layout became larger here and was 80% finished, then stalled as I had retired from yet more stress (young offenders team office manager - why do I do these things to myself....).  Its replacement was to be on the same boards, full urban grot OO BR(S) terminus, sort of huge Minories, EMU's, some steam, bought loads of those EMU's, steam, legions of parcels vehicles....never got started, someone joined into a  business with a pal and....more stress, selling toy trains this time. Stillborn.  Anyone want to buy a lot of ....se above!  So an O gauge itch got scratched, Forest of Dean-y, and that is happening.  I'd still love the BR(S) thing but it'll never happen.  

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by New Haven Neil

[bazjones1711]

A few layouts I'd like to build would be :

Great Coates sidings No 1 , and with enough space West Marsh siding which were the other side of the bridge at Great Coates , this area dealt with export stainless slab from Tinsley to Grimsby dock and returning semi finished stainless coil back to Tinsley , plus finished coil to the likes of Wolverhampton etc... Other traffic included imported ilmemite , zinc blocks , I would base the layout around the late 1980's to early 90's . Class 08 , 20 , 31, 37 , 47 , 56 plus a multitude of steel wagons.

 

Kings Lynn dock:

A simple one line layout of the dockside with operating dock cranes loading imported coil onto BBA , BAA , SPA and VTG KIA telescopic wagons , plus a second crane to load imported coal into HAA MGR wagons , with just a single class 08 needed .

 

Corkickle incline :

A rope operated incline that lasted into the 1980's that was used to for chemical traffic to the Albright and Wilson works , stock would be a Sentinel 0-4-0 , PCA in Albright and Wilson and Lever Brothers livery  , ICI Tipair PEA and HTV coal wagons that I think were used only for balanced  workings .

 

We have stated another three layouts , Tees Yard wagon repair depot ,   which is nearly finished , BSC Bromford Bridge tube works exchange sidings ,  which has just been started that will use a Sentinel , class 08 and various wagons to bring in ingots with outward tube traffic.

Lastly Shepcote Lane coil sidings , another layout that will be just a single dead end sidings  based on the coil unloading sidings at Tinsley , working overhead crane with loads of coil wagons , class 08 , 20 , 37 , 56 , 60 , 66 .

That lot should keep us going for a few years , although I enjoy building rather than operating layouts , only playing trains when we take them to exhibitions .

 

 

[Re6/6]

The first 'grand project' was to be something similar to 'Coombe Junction and the Tyling Branch' (Ken Payne?) a lovely large mainline oval where I could watch an ever increasing collection of 30s GWR stuff rush by!

 

An ambition in later life was to build 'Henstridge', not grandiose in its size, but with bridge 171 over the River Stour it was going to be a nice big roundy-roundy. I managed to build the girder bridge and the four flood arches and I still have those!

 

..............the problem is that I'm still doing it now in my sunset years!

[The Johnster]

‘Cardiff North Dock’, 50’s could-have-been,  bleak industrial back-of-the-steelworks on the foreshore between Roath Dock and the mouth of the Rhymni River, with high level worker’s service terminus (service from Queen Street), high level coal storage from Crockherbtown Jc feeding hoists, low level in front taking empty wagons from the hoists and assembling them into trains for return to the pits via the Roath Branch, plus general cargo for export to ships and warehouses other side of dock from coal hoists, small industrial premises fed by track inset to road (think Ferry Rd, or East Moors Road), BP oil tank farm (they never had one in Cardiff. focussed on Llandarcy) a rail-fed hydraulic pumping station to work the hoists and the sea lock, and connection to Stonefields Jc. bringing main line tender engines into play.  The part modelled would have been the basin not the main dock pound. 
 

It needed 4 sides of a dedicated room, something I never had available. The location would have been roughly where the heliport is now, reclaimed land, and the dock had it’s own dredged lock entrance, much used by smaller vessels when the main Queen Alexander lock was occupied.  As it’s turned out, it would probably have been too much for a single-handed operator and likely an ultimate failure; I’m more than happy with Cwmdimbath in it’s current form, plenty to do but not so much as to be stressful. 

[St Enodoc]

My might-but-probably-never-will projects:

 

1. Finchley Central (LT) in about 1962, when steam-hauled freights were still running. My primary school backed on to the Edgware branch near Mill Hill East.

2. Hythe (RH&DR) in about 1963 when Dad first took us to visit.

3. The Isle of Wight system - all of it, so pre-1953.

4. Horsted Keynes (Bluebell Railway) either in 1968 when I first visited or 1963 before the Haywards Heath service finished.

5. Blythburgh (Southwold Railway). No point now since Peter Kazer built his magnificent model.

6. Watchet. A school mate and I planned to build this. It got as far as one Wills 2251, which I still own.

7. The Road to the Isles, an end-on junction between the NBR and HR at Kinloch Rannoch. The late Dave Walker and I had plans for this before he went to 0 gauge.

8. Bukit Timah (Malayan Railway) with a bit of modeller's licence with the Jurong branch (closed 1992) and the E&O express (started 1993).

 

Apart from that, nothing much.

 

 

[SteveyDee68]

Simple…

 

Dover Marine

 

In full, with the train ferry and marshalling yards etc

 

In the transition era approx 1958-1960, so Bulleid Merchant Navy and West Country Pacific locos on boat trains transitioning into Class 71s and then later 4-CEP/BEP formations

 

Lovely big ships with (preferably) a train ferry capable of leaving dock and sailing across the Channel in order to swap stock etc

 

Very much a pipe dream! 😆

 

HOURS OF PLANNING FUN!

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

You could always cheat like I did!

I've only ever modelled one railway in one period in one gauge, so my dream layout in my working days was the one I was going to build in my retirement, a big roundy round set in an northern, Sheffield ish, urban area, full of northern grot.

Then I saw Wibdenshaw and thought that sort of layout and environment was my aim, and if I do it half as well I'll be happy.

Cue changes in personal circumstances years later, and through a chain of events, I am now the proud owner of said layout, so don't despair, persevere, your dream may come true, but I wouldn't wish it to happen to you in the way it happened to me.

 

Mike.

[Oldddudders]

Our first home was a two-up, two-down middle of modern terrace in Strood, Kent. No plans for bambini, so the small second bedroom was going to become East Grinstead. Somehow! High level, low level and the St Margarets Spur. I did get an L-girder baseboard built, and some track laid, but the impossibility of getting Wills kits to run well, still less look good when painted, turned it all to drear. 

 

Other fond ideas include an East German 750mm layout, with standard gauge interface/exchange. Two locations fascinate - Hetzdorf and Wolkenstein, but I have resisted investing. Not so the On30 Rio Grande Southern, where I have a pile of generic trains, several authentic kit-built structures, bits for a couple of decent trestles - I fancy Bridge 45A at about 8 feet long - but no ready site. 

 

In the real world, like New Haven Neil, I have a large moribund HO US layout, which has sacrificed an area of baseboard to be Halwill Junction, post-war. At 74, and in an inclement unheated 1850 stone barn, progress is slow outside the warm seasons! A portable Harz metre-gauge HOm layout works, but needs some TLC, not to mention scenery....

 

Having been widowed, I am now blessed with a very successful second marriage, but we live in both France and England, so not all my time is chez moi. I am, however, making use of my time in the UK to make purchases without the hassle of post-Brexit import issues, and since our finances are separated - Sherry is richer than I am! - I don't have to smuggle items home!