I recently changed projects at work, and took advantage of that to have a few days of modelmaking therapy.
I decided it was time to build some baseboards for my next layout, which I tried to build in model form previously.
I’m very pleased with the result:
Seen in front is my current 00 layout, and I’m just trying out the boards to see if the track plan still fits!
Following on from Paper Model 1, here is a second go around:
The scale is the same, with one square being 50mm.
I’ve re-assesed the size of the concrete oil bunker, using this photo. if I assume the grid visible is 8’x4′ panels, then it appears to be about twice the height of a railway wagon. So the new model is only 500mm tall, which should be much more manageable.
I’ve also dropped the backscene panel on one side, so that the model is viewable from two edges.
Food for thought – it will still be considerably larger than Phoenix Yard, so I need to think about whether it should be possible to split it up for storage. The fact that the pointwork is in the centre of the plan will make this awkward at best.
You can see that on this model I printed off a trackplan from the Templot plan I have. The wagons seem a tight squeeze, so I will need to check the sidings have enough space in them for the 5/3/3 inglenook I want this plan to be.
In planning my next model railway, I want to improve on a few things from Phoenix Yard. One surprise I had in building that from just a trackplan was how much of the model I had to subsequently improvise. So this time I’m going to try to build a scale model first.
This is my first cut at a 1/10th scale model of my 1/76 model:
The gridded paper has a grid that will be 50mm on the ‘full-size’ model. The near vertical pieces are intended to be chalk cliffs, and the lozenge/bunker object in the corner is intended to be the concrete oil storage facility – inspired by Micheldever.
This has already been a useful exercise. I had to reject the configuration ‘in my minds eye’ as it simply couldn’t be constructed. This design then emerged, from my attempts to scale off the photos of Micheldever I found online.
There is a clear problem with this model if you measure it off – the vertical dimension will be 90cm, and easily a meter once I’ve allowed for under track space for bracing, etc.
Hard to pick out is a small tent shape in front of the oil bunker – that is a scale representation of a TTA tank wagon.
If I want a more compact and manageable model, I clearly need to rethink my design.