Dawson Creek: planning planning planning...

So despite not having a baseboard and only recently making a start on rolling stock, my plans for a US outline 009 layout have been making progress...

After the excitement of the Shinohara track arriving the other week, I've been working up details of the layout in my head... I like to think how the different scenes and sections of the layout will work, the shape and size of buildings, the landscape... this helps me to visualise the layout before I even begin to cut wood.

The basic concept is still a home based layout, now in a self contained box. The layout will appear to 'float' on the black rectangular base, as the scenery will not have any square edges, if I do it right! The centre spine provides a small backscene, view block and structural support for the lid, so it can be made from thinner material to reduce weight.

One end you have the dock on the creek, where ore is shipped away and store materials brought in. Half the dock is behind cribbing at the edge of the river bank, the other half is over the water, with a small derrick crane.

The station area has a small locomotive shed and workshop, general store and bunk houses, along with a small passing loop, big enough for the short trains I intend to operate. The 150mm radius curves I'm planning won't allow long locomotives or cars anyway!

The other side will feature both a small logging camp, with a loading platform, and a creek with dredge and siding to take minerals for processing straight from the river bed. The opposite end to the dock will feature the line running on a shelf alongside the creek, before going through a cutting. Clever placement of trees will split all the scenes up.

Trackwork will be Shinohara H0n2.5 (9mm) and manually operated points using Caboose Industries throws. Simple DC operation using one engine in operation.

I am lucky to have collected a lot of the required trees for an earlier European forestry layout project which came to nothing - at present I have no plans for building anything for this concept, so I'm happy to use them here... they are lovely and I have nearly 100 of them in total from a European supplier - when I dig them out I'll remind myself who they were from and share that here as well.

I've been working on the Davenport and wagons in the past few weeks so I will share where things are up to on a physical modelling front after the weekend. More soon...