Wednesday, March 25, 2009

A first idea

So, time for a first track plan. This one is inspired by the goods yard at Louth station and was kicked into life by reading the post at Grogley Junction that started "Louth would make a great model if someone had the space..."
That is a belief I've had for quite sometime too. Even though I have specialised in smaller layouts I'd never tried to get some of the essence of Louth into a small layout. Until now.
It might not be to everyones taste but it's designed for my interest in shunting and makes the huge goods shed that Louth had the focus of the layout. I don't know why I didn't come up with the idea years ago. Perhaps I'm just to close to the East Lincolnshire stations and needed to stand back from them a bit to get a new perspective. Look at them with a fresh pair of eyes, so to speak. When the idea came, it came in a flash. To use Newbridge hill as the front of the layout with the end of the ABM maltings forming an excellent viewblock in the very best Iain C. Rice tradition on the right. With the still preserved, Louth Signal Box at the left.
So what would the size of such a layout be. As this is only a conceptual sketch I don't really know. But having measured the site up using Google Earth I found that if you modelled the area to scale it would come in at about 8' x 2'. Which isn't a bad size for all this potential operation.
BUT. With a couple of fiddle yards at either end it's not going to fit my 10'6" available space. There is room for some compression there. The Goods shed is so huge it could loose a bay or two and you wouldn't notice and you could shorten the sidings a bit too. Even so it's still pushing it a bit to fit it all into 10'6". Oh well back to the drawing board...

1 comment:

  1. To help mask the exit on the left, (to Grimsby) there is a row of terrace cottages that could be brought into play.

    I like it.

    ReplyDelete