Old school…

The way a soft pencil moves over paper, smooth yet with a subtle feedback through the finger tips. Tracing lines from mind to reality, sketching out ideas almost without thinking, as if the act of creating marks is an intangible but integral part of the process…

It was a hot day - sat in the partial shade with a cold (alcohol free) beer and Iain Rice’s ‘An Approach to Model Railway Layout Design - Finescale in Small Spaces’ was a pleasant way to spend some time and sit out the heat of the house. I’m not sure if it was the heat, the book or the beer but I felt an urge to do draft some layout ideas - and instead of reaching for the very iPad I’m typing this upon, I found an old school square paper note book (useful for scale) and a lovely soft pencil, free many years ago at a conference in my old life.

I’ve always been drawn to the Devon branch-line to Hemyock. From my very first ‘solo’ project via plans in between this slightly obscure and untypical prototype keeps playing on loop in my subconscious. In Iain’s book he re-imagines the branch and creates a typical Rice scheme featuring extravagant yet untypical point work. It was this catalyst that led to the first sketch as I imagined a skewed a run round loop across an IKEA Lack shelf with some kick back sidings…

The soft flow of the pencil on paper was an act of exercising muscle memory - both physical and mental… almost one step ahead of each stroke on the paper, nudging, adjusting and reflecting on what followed. Flipping things gave a nicer flow, and allowed the old station to hide the train a touch… for here I imagine the setting to be my typical 1950s onwards, grubby tank engines and early diesels. Tired right of way and eking out an existence.

The dairy, stage left, inspired by Hemyock takes fuel oil (front) and milk tank wagons (back - through the old platform and across the road). On the right is a feed mill, from Uffculme but with echoes of the Prairie Sentinels I’ve been distracted by more recently. Here grain wagons and the occasional van serve the siding beyond the abandoned cattle dock. Coal in 16t minerals and occasional other agricultural equipment arrive in the front siding served by an attractive lattice crane.

When I conceived this I had in mind Peco Code 75 bullhead and small radius turnouts. All structures to be scratchbuilt or kit bashed. A roughly 4x1 cameo… it would appreciate a touch more space to breathe - so my mind turned to N? But here, the lack of a semi-scale ready to lay track system does trip us up… and thoughts of more Peco Code 55 experiments resurface. For the short two axle wagons and small locomotives would not work well on the gigantic gap between rails at the frog, designed for old Farish pizza-cutters despite the ‘finescale’  description.

It was all too quickly time to make dinner and I put the book and pencil back down, but that experience was deeply enjoyable. Sharing that here I hope I encourage us all back to exploring the beauty of working ‘offline’ and perhaps consider more deliberately our interaction with the internet, forums and social media. Will I build it? Who knows - but it was good fun being back in this space. Until next time, more soon… 

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