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David Rickard

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  1. David Rickard
    Today, I took my plan of action a step further. I exported a hi-res image from Xara, and plopped that onto a banner page in Publisher, suitably sized to match my baseboard size. That was printed out onto A4 sheets, which were then duly trimmed, and taped together into one big sheet. Finally, said sheet was pinned to the board.
     
     

     
     
    Various locos and rolling stock were then placed onto the sections of track, to see how things fit, how sizes are, etc. I printed it on the laser printer, as there's a LOT of green on the plan, and printing out that much colour would be a bit silly I felt.
     
    Having done that, the first thing that struck me was how viable it looks. It helped so much to visualise the layout, how things will fit, etc.
     

     
     
    I like how 'big' it feels. I can fit full-length passenger trains on it, without them looking like they're too squeezed in. The locos sit in the sidings and the depot roads with lots of space in front and behind of them. In previous plans I had pretty short headshunts and sidings, which left a somewhat cramped feel.
     

     
     
    There's a nice run for trains to pick up speed and slow down coming in and out. Plus the depot is connected to the main tracks, but nicely isolated, so I can have things happening there without 'fouling the main'. The station/depot combo is losely based on the Aylesbury arrangement, albeit a bit jumbled up.
     
    A couple of things have jumped out at me though.

    The bridge is wide enough for vehicles, but not pedestrians! I considered just making it wider, but a better remedy is to run a footbridge alongside it. There's a road bridge/foot bridge combo like that round here. It also occurs to me that having one either side of the split, will hide it quite nicely! I've seen many wonderful layouts with massive fault-lines down the middle. That's an idea, maybe the join could be a land-slide... The island platform may be too narrow. Or is it? Answers on a postcard! I'm a little worried that the depot buildings might not fit too well. Kitbashing may be required. Having studied satellite photos, I'm going to need a LOT of trees. I still want to put something in the expanse of green near the fuelling stage. Still not sure what. I think I'll keep my eye out for something interesting. I'd originally envisaged the row of houses at the back on top of the embankment with their backs to the track. However, it occurred there's a row of houses round here facing the railway. They have small front gardens, then a footpath, a small fence, then the railway line. Something like that would work very nicely.
    I'm really quite keen on this plan though. It's shaping up nicely.
  2. David Rickard
    My first layout, having returned to railway modelling, turned into a disaster. It was spiralling out of control, was too complex, fiddly, and quite frankly, no fun to work on. I ripped it all up, and decided to start again.
    After much deliberation, fiddling around in XTrkCad4, and browsing magazines and things, I've finally come up with a plan.
     
    I present - 'untitled II'.
     

     
     
    Location: Somewhere around the Chilterns. Ish.
    Era: Modern, post-privatisation.
    Scene Modelled: A small TMD carrying out work on anything I feel like, along with a small commuter station.
     
    The whole base board consists of two 700x300mm boards. The split exists to the left of the bridge in the middle. The boards are already built, and are free-standing. The idea behind building the boards before doing anything else was to stop me going mad with the design. The boards I built were of a much better construct than my first attempt, which was pretty rubbish. I found some screws didn't even make contact with the second bit of wood they were meant to be going into!
     
    On this design, we have two tracks entering on the left. These converge onto the two lines entering the station. One ends in a bay platform, the other on a through platform. Said lines also go toward a headshunt, with a fuelling facility sitting in it. After entering the headshunt, a train and make its way down to the four roads of the TMD. There's some Pikestuff buildings I like the look of, which should fit the part.
     
    Offscene on the left, I will have a cassette storage system, or at least a couple of bits of track on a plank which can be used to change trains. It won't be a full-scale fiddle yard, not until I have more storage room! The right hand side will lead nowhere for now. In future it could be extended, or may never go anywhere!
     
    I'm leaning towards the notion of no side scenic breaks (i.e. bridges). I'll probably have a back-scene though. I'm probably not going to use low-relief buildings as to me, they look like a building cut in half!
     
    The bridge in the middle will serve to hide the baseboard join. It will join up with the houses at the back, which are on an embankment, the same level as the road. On the other parts of the bridge, it will drop down to baseboard level.
     
    The office building will be some sort of non-descript modern building type. Similarly, the bus depot down front could be an interesting feature, as I can plonk various random buses and things in the yard in front of it.
     
    The empty green space on the bottom right may end up with something in it. So far, I'm not overly sure what!
     
    I'm going to try and have a bash at working out where the signals should sit.
     
    I'm much more pleased with this plan though. It's an actual plan!
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