Module idea # x

(more from Kiwibonds. I'm suffering from 'backatworkitius')
While copying a zillion files today I stumbled upon a scene that’s just begging to be modeled by one of the blog’s Wellington viewers. Or ‘moduled’, to coin a phrase.


It’s a compact, self contained, easy to build, very recogniseable, and fairly dramatic scene. You could operate it joined to other double track modules; as part of a Wellington Harbour home layout (more on that later); or connect up just one of the tracks for single track operation, leaving the other as a stand-alone powered track that you could shuffle a unit back and forth on - hence the ‘staging space’ in the tunnels there, accessible via slots in the backscene. I think you’d need about 1.5 x 3 feet to do the scene justice, although I did it in an A3-ish sized space once.


Pretty straightforward really. The buildings in the background and road would be modeled in forced perspective, the road hooking around to the right behind the hill. Cars in the extreme foreground could be HO and those behind the bridge N. The track and bridge could even be located quite to the backscene to reduce the module footprint, however as drawn, having the road climbing to join the backscene, with the join hidden by the bridge would be useful. Those buildings in the right foreground have only sprung up in the last few decades – you could use them to hide the tunnel, as the real one should be way off to the right, or eliminate them altogether. I’d be tempted to put an LV Martin sign on the corner even though his buildings are on the block closer to the camera. If you want to model the catenary wire in all its glory, luckily you only have to model a very short distance of it…

As an alternative, you could model this scene from the other side and look down the gorge to the harbour, with the motorway curving out to the right in forced perspective and hiding the backdrop join. I don’t have a pic of that view at hand, but here’s one of the southern end (left side) of the view showing the bridge detail.


The backscene could continue down the sides of the module, or you could put portals at both ends of the tunnels for mating to other ‘flat land’ modules.