Putting it all down on paper....

Am_Fet writes:

As threatened late last week, this is the blog post about how I would do a layout based on MacLennan.....except its not. Well, it sort of is....if you look slightly to the side of it and squint....



MacLennan shares a lot of similarities with another of my favourite stations, Waihao Forks (both on a curve, both with a crossover to the stockyards, Any Aucklander is unable to locate them on a map, etc...). So, rather than re-invent the wheel (which several luddites still suggest was a bad idea and we should all just crawl back into the swamp), I will present for you here the design details of my Waihao Forks layout back in the days when I modeled in some other scale. Feel free to read "MacLennan" wherever necessary.

The first real bombshell came when I borrowed a swag of White Swan publications off the eminent Squadron Leader (last seen flying a Mahogany Bomber). The two books here that really kicked off the design process were by those two brilliant Poms, Barry Norman and Iain Rice (starts crawling now to prevent litigation over copyright infringements).

The first plan is from Barry Norman:



Fantastic! The layout is on a curve and fits nicely back into a corner! Give me a piece of that!!



Following Barry's lead, I used the sector plate at one end to serve the 3 roads at the end without using points. Admittedly, I did have concerns about this layout size-wise, and whether the sector plates at each end would be too small....so more cogitating ensued.....and then the epiphany, courtesy of Iain Rice:



Navigation sidings is far and away my favourite Iain Rice plan....I'd love to populate it with a selection of J50, J52 and N1 locomotives and base it somewhere in darkest London, running freights south via Snow Hill and Blackfriars....sigh....

Meanwhile, back on this planet, I'd like to point out that it wasnt the layout plan that attracted me to this, but more the way the layout is constructed. Note the fold lines...very clever...

So, using the ideas of both layouts, I drew up a scale plan of The Forks, then married it to a plan of the baseboard, and wiggled it around a few times...



Until I came up with this:



Things to note:

- I've enlarged the sector plates, and used the shelf at the back to hold a cassette to get stock on and off the layout.

- The fold line at the left is where the "wings" are positioned, hiding the sector plate at that end.

- The track at the stock yard carries on "offstage" to allow more J and S wagons to be stored on it.

- To allow the layout to fold on top of itself, the hinges need to be mounted above track level. On the right side of the layout, this is achieve by have a large hinge located in the (removable) goods shed.

At his stage, Cabbage came on board and suggested that the whole baseboard could be built from foam, so I prepared a cutting template and played with how the layout would fold over onto itself (shown in yellow in the plan):



And then....The Chairman of the Board discovered Nz120 and milk trains, and the whole project was shelved.

Still, I present it here in the hopes it may inspire others or at least provide the catalyst for someone else's design problem. I'm more than happy for someone to pick this idea up and run with it....in fact, I'll even pass on all the design work, and even do some more if needed (contact me through the Head Druff). As previously mentioned, it will suit MacLennan to a T, as well as a lot of other small NZR stations located on curves.