November, 2008

Getting a design right

15 November, 2008

Putting a layout together requires first, some sort of design. Model railroading is not much different than corporate or advertising design when it comes to this. I can end up with a couple of hundred different designs and/or aspects when I create a brand. From that 99% of it gets trashed and I'm left with one or two.

Fortunately it only took about 20 different ideas to come up with this:

I wanted a switching layout, shelf based with micro elements as vignettes. It may need a bit more refining, but most of that will be in the construction side of things. Basically it's the butt end of a mining line. There's a mine, various buildings and stuff. The idea is a main line loco brings in and picks up cars, then returns to "somewhere out there" on the left. A small switcher based at the camp handles the routine stuff.

The size is 9 feet by 18 inches (I really do struggle with these little things) and should provide a lot of scope for detail and operations (if I get around to it).

I am stuck with my track, only because I dished out about a hundred bucks on the stuff and don't want to wastefully trash it. It's made by Peco here in England and quite honestly I am not impressed (the nice version). Probably because I'm used to handlaying track and scratch building my own switches, I just got a bit lazy and regret it. Now I'm gonna to have to bury a lot of it in scenary to get rid of the toy look.