Calamocos - Spanish Island FEVE endeavour

[ianmianmianm]

I've been in and out of the forum for a few years as the last decade of my life has been spent travelling around a lot - Portugal, Bermuda (twice), Grand Cayman, Alderney, Cumbria, Cornwall and Malta have all beckoned with various temptations of prototype as a consequence.

 

With stock in boxes for a Bermuda Railway layout (N), LUL/DLR layout (N), and a Portuguese Narrow Gauge (HOm), the need to move around and transport chattels has restricted me to a succession of fun but failed micros, more lately a Latin Americal freelance job.

 

Over the last few weeks I decided that, especially with the slow progress of HOm Portuguese kits and RTR, and the frustrations with chassis, it was time for a reappraisal. The Bermuda stuff is still in a boxfile (too fascinating to ignore). The 3 genuinely Portuguese looking buildings along with 2 road vehicles and 3 DMU bodyshells are all boxed up now and could still one day emerge as a SLT with a rural theme. Or can get a run on here as Rule 1.

 

Pulling together buildings, trees, and other elements from the Portuguese layout plans, and with some interesting Shapeways models as well as responsive and reasonably priced RTR suppliers, I am going to tackle the delights of FEVE - Spanish Metre Gauge - in the 80s before FEVE began to divest some of its lines to the autonomous regions. Having spent a few weeks on volunteer work in 3 Canary Islands a decade or so ago, I decided that a railway on the fictitious island of Los Gatos would be worth a shot. The purchase of a second hand but untouched Tim Horn board, and an unobliterated 7ft length of wall with no plug sockets, windows, doors or radiators, clinched it.

 

With so much stuff in hand, I was able to mock up in situ and really only need one more LR Spanish building to get this running. The track plan will be very simple as I didn't want to fill the board with track and then just lipservice to buildings - so a through line with a bay platform. I'm going to use the FEVE 2100 and 5100 Billard railcars, which will mean a bit of shunting for the second motor car to leave the bay platform and collect the trailer that had been brought in by the first if the trains are terminating. Single cars will run through to the right hand fiddlestub.  The wonderful thing is that Billard cars were very short - a motor and trailer pair are still only 1 FT in HO scale. Sinle cars were the norm and even the longer railcars only take about 20cm. 

 

A bit of additional play value will be there from the tram line at the rear of the station, and also the large open turning area on the front left by the warehouse will see some moving RC road vehicles coming from the left hand fiddle yard.

The whole length will be 2ft FY, 4ft scenic, 1ft FY.  Locolifts will provide the FY storage.

 

It's genuinely nice to see how much better Spanish Railways are served by scenics and stock. Trying to model Portuguese in HOm was becoming immensely frustrating and this is meant to be a hobby, not work.  That station building is a short-lived experiment by Bachman to enter the Spanish market with Scenecraft (I've pimped it a bit).  There are also some cheap Skaledale OO Scaledale buildings in there, and a butchered Airfix garage.

 

The railcars in the pic are my repainted Tomytec HOe 9mm gauge ones that were made for my Latin micro - they are there helping me to viualise and mock-up and will be up for grabs shortly if anyone wants to make me an offer.

 

Anyone else out there use this method of layout planning (mocking up on the board with the actual buildings). It does work out a bit expensive as there is wastage involved. But it does mean you get to do fun stuff like posters and backscene from the off 

Edited May 15, 2023 by ianmianmianm