Sunday morning

I've been reading a model railroader book this week. Normally I don't read much of the US stuff as it doesn't hold much in common with the situation that typical NZR modeler finds himself in (RTR rolling stock etc). However while looking for something else in the local library (and locally its slim pickings, and I think I'm now being charged to withdraw books), I stumbled across 'Realistic model railway design' by Tony Koester. His colun is one of the few I pick up model railroader to read. Mostly its about designing a freelance railroad in the US, but there are some intersting ideas buryed in there. I always find it interesting to read about these huge layouts that exist in the US and the planning that goes into them, even if I know sod all about the prototype. However, when it comes to operation they really do have a march on the rest of the world. I guess that in our wee part of the modeling world we do have a fair excuse in that to build a decent layout one has to make the locos and rolling stock, before we even start thinking about a layout. Also we don't tend to have the mansion szed homes that populate the US (and these things are enormous, I've stayed in one).

Reading about designing a freelance railroad did get me thinking though. I've always modeled specfic locations for my layouts (Dunedin, Cass and now Paikakariki, plus the aborted Cross Creek), which is the real bonus of modeling in NZ120 as you can do this sort of thing in a reasonable space. I picked these for a variety of reasons at the time, but they were/are all individual scenes. I have ecnetly been thinking along larger lines for a layout, with Southland branchlines or west coast coal among the ideas. What does hold me back a bit is that the bits I like are balanced out by the bits that I don't like. Using some of the freelance ideas I should be able to comine the bits I want while losing the bits I don't like that nuch.

Hence while I like the Greymouth wharves, the location of the main station relative to this is really crap for a model railway, as the main station is on an angle from the whares and would require a very deep baseboard for that part of the layout. Also, you would want to put in the Cobden bridge but this could block a potential isle.

Likewise with a Southland branchlines layout. A meandering collection of lines with a wide variety of traffic which would be quite cool. To have an operating layout with all these included might be a bit difficult as there was only one large loco depot at Invercargill, and you would need quite a large collection of locos to run it. To get the mainline trains you would need to model the main line towards Gore.

For a more modern theme, the milk trains runing in Taranaki could be interesting (you can't tell if they are loaded or unloaded), but I don't have enough information to decide if it would make an interesting layout. Finally the Auckland surburban scene again is something i think that could really work in an operational layout. (I keep thinking if Wellington would, but I'm not sure).

I'm not quite sure what my ramble has achieved here, but hopefully I'll be able to add some more later in the week.