Caer: Change here for nostalgia…

Standing on the platform at a station I feel an overwhelming sense of wellbeing and calm. Quite why remains somewhat of a mystery to me but more recently I have certainly rediscovered and revelled in it…

It is this emotional connection that fuelled the idea of creating a layout, somewhere to relive that feeling and find calm amongst the chaos of a modern home. That said, big stations take up a lot of space and that here is at a premium.

 

But what if we just took a 'picture' and cropped the contents, framed just a portion - it would still be a big station, just smaller. Could I take this approach to Chester? Before it's rebuilding you would walk into the foyer and whilst Dad turned left to the ticket office I'd wander off on those lazy sunday afternoons for a walk around the station. The platform on the right often would have a locomotive or unit stabled, and here you could get up close to it, enjoy it without the hustle and bustle of the main passenger areas of the station.

It is this part of the station that I proposed to crop down to around 70-100cm by about 25cm, and the thought of using the Welsh name, Caer, as it would not be an exact replica. Keeping things analog, following those pen and ink sketches I cut up old cereal boxes and began to get a feel for the physical constraints of working in N - and you know what, it feels doable, it feels right.

So why then, am I building Wrecsam Canolgan (Wrexham Central?) and Gerald Road right now and not Caer? - quite simply for the learning. Gerald Road is about honing my skills building complex structures in N, Wrecsam is about platforms and canopies and repeatable, neat architecture. These two form test pieces for the project to follow. 

My Dad used to repeat his catch phrase 'Nostalgia is for losers' to me when I talked about 'the good old days' in my teens, lamenting the British Rail I saw in books, he encouraged me instead to embrace the sectorisation era I was enjoying. Now 30 years on, nostalgia is a mindful balm for the social media, global news stories of doom filled world we live in - and I'm more than happy to embrace that. I wonder what your own experiences of railways would tell you about the models that could help you in the same way? Until next time, more soon...

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