Paper planning

I have finally got the plan printed out after bartering some advice and placed on the floor as you can see here and it has not disappointed me with outlining where things work and don’t work. Before I get into more of the detail I just want to reiterate the fact that this is NOT the final product and I haven’t even trimmed the pages to get them nearer to a calibrated image of what will be. It does however fit in the seven feet I originally allocated to my physical layout give or take half an inch or for the metrically minded twenty five millimetres, which is pretty close in my mind.

Side B – Urban, full station plan Stock placement to give sense of space North yard sidings and loco shed

So how does the virtual plan fit the reality? For the first pass not too badly. I was surprised at the space for the platforms and the fact I can get almost prototypical length trains in to the station area. However I think that the layout will benefit from another track for holding freight trains, so I think this will entail another double slip.i didn’t fill out the loco shed at the north end as I was just using the spur track as a marker to see how it would fit in with the incoming mainline track. Also the freight offload track is not marked on the plan and this leads me into the need to shift the centreline giving more space to the urban side and thus squeezing out the countryside side. I am not sure what I think about the South end and that the track nearest the platform was meant to be another single road loco shed but looking at the space available it really doesn’t lend itself to the location and it would probably be best used as a loco release road and the track behind becoming the shed. I am toying with the idea of that area having a slight elevation to not only give the impression of the line sloping away but also to help with the scenic contouring rising up to the backscene. This is something I might play with in mockup to see how it looks. I have also been thinking about a little gradient out of both sides of the station to mimic the real location and also to provide some interest to the other side. Then there’s the spectre of straight tracks but I think that like a lot of Swiss stations this was not uncommon. I might bend the southern end to near the edge of the baseboard but I’ll have to see how it look on digital plan before I commit to a printout for it.

I have yet to work out the stock requirements for the layout and thus will have a bearing on how the rural side is set out but for the moment I am concentrating on side B as I call it. Now that it takes a step closer to productivity this is where I really need to think hard about the operational potential to as from watching a number of videos there seemed to be quite a assortment of shunting locos based at the station with a mixture of diesel and electric tractor units. At the moment there is no freight stock available unless one stock bashes existing, usually fleischmann, wagon stock but I’m sure as I start to think about attempting to produce my own design of the two axle container cars it’s guaranteed to get Kato into the game.

Anyway for the moment I have plenty to think about and go back to the drawing board with, well Templot, in order to tweak the tracks to where I want them. But all in all it’s not a bad first attempt. With the stock on the plan I get a much better feel of how it’s going to look and I like the fact it won’t be as cramped as I initially thought.

Until next time..