The Matchbox: A Newfoundland Pier…
A few months ago I had a diversion into Newfoundland’s railway heritage and got as far as trying to source a resin body shell from a supplier in Brazil… alongside that journey was a dig around for possible layout schemes…
One of Chris’s schemes that I’ve had in mind to develop a layout design for sometime is the Matchbox. In his own words…
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| Thumbnail photos Joe McMillan (https://flic.kr/p/xtzAoB) and Jon Archibald (https://flic.kr/p/cM3Jgo) |
Traditionally, a model railway remains fixed in place. If we need that extra length of track, we achieve it by adding to the layout by attaching staging to a free end like a pier jutting from the land out into the sea. In this case, I propose moving the layout out of the way to make room for the extra track we need. This is made easy by mounting the layout on a set of drawer slides built onto the top of the integral storage unit. It slides open and closed like a matchbox and in doing so, both reveals the trains stored inside and also evolves the plan from static diorama to operating model railway.
One sentence stuck in my grey matter ‘like a pier jutting out from the land’. The wonderful photos by Joe and Jon that I found on Flickr, showing a CN train on the pier at Lewisporte, seemed to offer a compact scheme for the Matchbox, and a compact scheme for modelling part of the Newfoundland railway.
Lewisporte was reached off a short 10 mile spur leaving the mainline at Notre Dame junction. The subdivision was shut in August 1987, rails lifted during 1988. Lewisporte had grown with the construction of the mills at Grand Falls and the airport at Gander in the early 20th century. The harbour was also an important stop on CN’s coastal service, a lifeline for communities along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1985, before the sub was abandoned, CN moved 25000 tons of freight in the 5 month season, so basing our model in the twilight of its life allows us to model down at heal trackwork but with enough traffic to warrant a reasonable operation.
The scheme is basically a switching puzzle / diarama. The thing about railways in Newfoundland is that although the gauge was narrow they were long, and travelled far… that just isn’t feasible in a compact space, hence some sort of terminal operation. The challenge with this project is not the track or the operation, but the scratch building of stock for the 12mm gauge. No turnouts keeps it otherwise cheap, and Peco flex track is available in H0m, most of it will be buried in the pier surface. Saying that, Chris Cardinal is hoping to offer a short run of the NF210 in both H0 and S scale if you’re interested. More details on that are on his website.
If you do take some of these ideas forwards, I’d love to see what you create so get in touch. In the meantime, more soon…
Or you could model a train ferry, with the pier sliding out from the stern door...
ReplyDeleteA cute spin on the idea… and a self contained layout, but perhaps limited as if it was the sort I’m envisaging with a closed deck you’d not see much… an alternative could be a car float, or one of the smaller rail ferries used in Vancouver Island service…
DeleteBuilding onto the ferry idea, the decks on the PEI ferries were four tracks wide: two pairs of sidings on either side of the ferry's main deck. The end of the layout could be the float bridge and this removable switching lead could represent the Borden or Cape Tormentine approach and yard. Could be a great application for your 70 tonner loading and unloading the ferry as Borden's did (or an RS18 if you model the New Brunswick side). Set in the very late 1960's that operation would include shoving the cars from the Charlottetown to Moncton mixed train onto the ferry.
DeleteChris
Thanks Chris, don’t tempt me…
DeleteI vaguely envisaged the ferry acting as a sort of sector plate, which was an idea I have in mind for another micro. Needless to say Carl Arendt provided some inspiration
Deletehttps://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-97-may-2010/
This is a neat idea and scaled to be successful too--not so many parts of the puzzle that might otherwise make the project impractical. If the resin HO scale engine didn't work out there's always the much more readily available Frateschi 1:76 model that could be used as a placeholder?
ReplyDeleteI like plans like The Matchbox because it keeps contained all the "stuff" of a model railway. There should be no need to have a shelf of other models, controllers, or like stuff just to support the railway. Doing so makes it, I think, a better installation in a public space in the home because of the way it's tucked in and a refined presentation. Extended to become an operating model railway I wonder if a portable light like an office lamp could be attached to the fascia and aimed at the extended layout? Maybe a couple of much smaller super bright LED lights aimed at a couple of points on that extended layout, lighting its surface like spotlights on the Lewisporte pier late at night?
Chris
This is key.
DeletePont-y-dulais is still used. Not as regularly as before, but it is used. Self contained. Stock in place. Plug in and go… Kinross, not the same, because it needs the fiddle sticks…
However, it could perhaps have had extendable fiddle yards, to be self contained…
I like this concept.
Next layout perhaps?
Chris, have you seen the neat Boxfile layouts from Scalescenes? https://scalescenes.com/product/ly02-canal-wharf-boxfile-layout/
DeleteRegarding suitable locomotives, a whitemetal kit of the G8 is available from railmaster exports:https://www.railmaster.co.nz/loco.htm
ReplyDeleteIf you wanted to model the pier as standard gauge rather than narrow gauge (perhaps such a change would have made the Newfoundland Railway a bit more of a going concern owing to the ease of interchange, and hence making the Terra Transport concept a bit more feasible?), you could look at one of the many Victorian Railways T classes that have been made over the years as the basis of a bash or even a simple respray, as these were GM G8s, albeit produced under licence by Clyde Engineering.
The Railmaster ones are S if I recall? Too big for me, there is a N gauge one on Shapeways I might work on…
DeleteLooking at the above comments, it's interesting to consider just how well a rail-barge/ferry-as-storage works as an operational element, and what it really is. Because what it really is, I believe, is a sceniced cassette. And a very good sceniced cassette it is too: It's visually distinct from the rest of the layout and thus gives a good sense of destination as well as making it easy to hide any gaps between it and the rest of the layout, the rollingstock can be kept visible on the deck, kits are available in several scales (and if none of them suit, a barge at least is a simple enough structure to scratchbuild), and it's a good excuse to add a tugboat to the layout. But there must be other forms of sceniced cassettes that are possible; even a ballasted and grassed cassette coming off the front of the layout and representing an interchange track might do. Such a cassette might well allow you to have your cake and eat it too, as it can be left in place to form part of a completely self-contained layout, or swapped out for another for more involved operation or just to move stock on and off the layout.
ReplyDeleteWait until you see today’s post then, plenty of inspiration for rail barges coming this way…
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