Past distractions (2)

Today I thought I'd present another one of the distractions that divert me from my plans to build a 4mm finescale layout.

This one, like so many I've produced is inspired by my home county of Lincolnshire. New Holland pier to be exact.

One day I was flying over Lincolnshire courtesy of Google earth as I do very often, just looking to see what I can recognise from the air. I arrived at New Holland pier. Originally there was a station at the end of the pier that connected with the ferry across the Humber estuary. The ferry closed when the Humber Bridge opened and the railway station not long after that. But there is still a quite an extensive set of rail sidings there. So a quick Google for "New Holland Pier" bought up this page and in particular the lower photograph. A super picture that set my creative cogs a whirring and I quickly sketched out this idea.

I think the influences are pretty obvious to see. It certainly could be quite the busy little layout. A mainline train would arrive at the station and leave a selection of wagons in the loop. Then a private industrial loco would pick them up and shunt them off to their respective locations. Returning with some wagons to be picked up by the mainline railway later in your operating sequence. The shunting activities could also be broken up by a DMU passenger service running through the station from time to time.

This idea never really got off the ground as the exchange rate was rather poor at the time I came up with the scheme so I perceived the plan as rather expensive to pursue from a stock point of view. It might also be easier to produce the layout to a manageable size in 00 scale as you could get away with sharper radius curves than in P4 and EM. N scale would be even better. I also think that things might be rather hectic behind the scenes with a lot of offstage sidings. Mind you, John H. Wright's 21st Street Yard also has a lot of offstage sidings with it too. So perhaps the idea is not barking up a wrong tree. I'd better stop thinking about this too much as I might be persuaded to start thinking about this again.

See how easily I can get distracted...