Coy in a box again...

With the news that Chris’s Coy 87 has, at least for now, taken a back seat to On30, I’ve revisited my own Claremont and Concord scheme...

The GE44t and three items that form the stock for this project.

Last time I shared the development of the box concept from a one piece board to a couple of separate ones, that allow a longer run. I considered temporary or removable scenery and how that might work in this context, and I looked at how that might manifest itself in a layout design that had the feel of the C&C despite its small and ridiculously compressed size.

Having spent some time mulling ideas over I’ve thought about the practicality of some of these concepts... how far to take the train set concept, and of there is another route to a pleasing and satisfactory result.

If the two boards sat on top of one another then their scenery could tessellate. This is not new, I’ve see if done on portable layouts for years, but the idea to use the roofs of the 2D flat structures at the baseboard edges is perhaps somewhat novel. In addition adding some relief to these structures it should be possible to depict both Pete’s store and the Coy loading dock... if you squint slightly you may even begin to see a parallel to Chris’s original scheme, perhaps cruelly amputated, but it’s there, the arrangement of roads and tracks especially at the crossing. In this version though all the action takes place on the board. The 44t and a boxcar start front right in the street, run to the headshunt and then traverse back to Coy. The 44t returns, perhaps pausing at Pete’s for the crew to pick up a Coke, before returning to the street trackage. Next, the 44t returns to collect the load, returning to the front again this is manually swapped for a different car, on the front spur, before the 44t places this to Coy. We’re not talking bags of operating potential here, but there is potential, for operation, for contemplation and for enjoyment, in both the modelling and the result, and hopefully for you, the reader, in reflecting on the design and letting your own creativity wander. 

Until next time, more soon...