Having spent way too long on YouTube over the last week and being rather taken with videos of Poschiavo Bahnhof on the Bernina line I have doodled up a track plan for the urban side or side two of my current layout plan.

I love the fact there is so much going on in the station with passenger trains including the Bernina Express and a seemingly diverse set of freight movements. With some artistic licence I’m sure I can pretty much get away with any combination of stock movements.

I also like the fact that the station seems to be squashed into a space, I need to do more investigation on google maps to see the real geography and topology but it really suits modelling and with compression and judicious selection of buildings. The engine sheds are pretty utilitarian but makes for easier construction and I am thinking of using them as partial low relief to act as the back scene.

I cannot match the gradients out of the station which are very impressive at 7%, in fact it is one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world although the Kato locos will pull trains up steep gradients that others could only dream of. Maybe another layout idea for the future. Unfortunately modernisation has come to Poschavio and the track plan is much reduced with the sidings almost removed and the line out of the station to the north has been skewed and double tracked out some way. Due to the joy of modelling we can freeze time as if these events never happened. Here is a satellite view to so the plan I am working to and I have also taken out quite a bit of the sidings on the North Eastern side of the station as there just wouldn’t be space for them.

So the next step is to transfer this to Templot to see how much of my vision can be squeezed into the available space I have. Quite often imagination really doesn’t match reality, and many ideas I have had have been discarded to the virtual waste basket on the floor due to this reason. The fact there are two double slips and a three way point in the plan means that the space left over depending on sizes will be some what less than I imagine. Once the plan is digitised a print out will be place on the kitchen floor to see how it actually looks and the actual space it takes up. Modifications are made and a reprint run to finalise, then calibrated. Yes I know I should have calibrated the printer but up until the final print I am really just working out if the plan is buildable.

Once I have this plan finalised I need to work on side one. This will be significantly simpler and both sides will act as staging for the other. I need to start scouring the net for a suitable candidates for the rural side, but I have an image in my mind of what would be suitable. But I have a plan to start work on.

https://youtu.be/VHzDxE_f5l8

Until next time..