Friday, October 24, 2008

Friday night layout idea


(Scanned from the Railfan mag. Buy a copy for the rest)

To back up the yet to be released A3 modular system, we have a layout idea and even a plan or 2. The latest Railfan has an interesting article on the Ngapara branchline, which has a stack of photos of scenes just begging to be modeled. (sorry I've been writing science reports and I need a bit of time to get back to writing normally). The most interesting in terms of variety of locomotives used was the sidings at the lime works, which operated from the mid 40's to 1997. First of all several track plans was liberated from the Ontrack archives. The 1971 version was deemed to match the photos most correctly.

An overview of the area was also found on google earth. This is a great toy for getting an idea of what the ground contours look like, and also how the buildings relate to the railway( or in this case where the railway once was).


To finish we have a sketch by yours truly to show how it might look on 3 contiguous A3 modules if visualised by a 3 year old with a crayon (I will get my niece to draw the next one).
I'm not quite sure on where the module breaks go, but I can't hand feed you all now can I. Locos could be an Ab, Ja, Dj, Dsc, or a Di (I've seen pictures of one on local shunts in the mid 80's). Wagons are a motley assortment of highsiders, with a guards van or 2 providing the only variety.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a design for a shelf layout, I think it could be used for any sort of prototype (English, American), any form of industrial building (Coal bin, Grain Elevators) and even any scale. Quite a versatile plan!

lalover said...

Good concept
I would be inclined to run a Das or Tr as well