The next step (part 3; mock up)

 

A good idea.

It is a good idea, isn’t it? Something like this really ticks a lot of boxes for me. We have the front siding, where we have a workshop where, if I’m clever. The inside should be able to be viewed without any problem. I like detailed workshops. There’s one on Give Way to Trains, and many years ago there was one on Purespring Watercress. I like tools. I’m not mechanically minded enough to use them. But tools are a great detail to fit into a workshop scene. Hopefully I can make something work in there. We need to start mocking up.

The first thing I work with when mocking up, is what I call the “Train Length Unit” or TLU. How long will a typical train length be on a micro layout?  It dictates what you can do in an area. It’s no good having a 4’ (1220mm) TLU on a 4’ long layout. It can’t move.

My TLU will be based around a short loco like the LocoRemote MotorRail and a couple of Binnie tippers. 

TLU = 11” 280mm

As you can see, the TLU is very short for such a large scale. On a 4’ long layout, the train will travel its own length four times. Which I feel is a pretty good minimum for a micro layout. With that detail ironed out, I felt I could start the mocking up.

The tipper

Let’s start with the tipper vignette. What should the height of the rails above the ground be? In the Sydney Leleux article in The Review, he states that if the material was being tipped into a standard RCH wagon that height should be  about 10 feet. Ten scale feet would be 160mm (about 7”). As I’m not planning on tipping into any vehicles (road or rail), I decided to go with what looks right. I added a couple of chaps from Give Way to Trains to the scene for scale. The rails are above them. But not too far above. In this image the rails are 120mm (just under 5") that’s about 2.3 meters or seven and a half feet in the real world. Not bad. I'm inclined to think that any taller would look too tall, especially given the narrow baseboard. This is being mocked up on a piece of white expanded polystyrene sheet 4' x 14" in size, and the layout will likely be the same size.

A workshop

Now the workshop. Its primary purpose is to to hide the exit to the sector plate/fiddle stick. It could be a fully modelled building, or it could be part relief, or even built to fit the site. Depending on the structure. Clearly there's plenty of room to fit a structure in there. The siding poking out of the building is a nice place to pose items for layout viewers and photographers. The scope for detailing around the workshop with scrap, spare parts and other detritus is enormous.

Overall view

Overall things look pretty good. I like what I see a lot. There's a lot of space. For a large scale in a small space. It's almost empty. I put my Land Rover in there to see if a truck could be fitted in to be loaded. A small one probably. But in these days of Radio controlled vehicles on model railway layouts I'm not sure there would be the room for one to operate. The trees that I sketched into the original concept will probably have to go. Or at least be smaller low relief ones, from the way I see things going together. So with a quick sketching over the mock up photo. You get this…

I think it will work.