Modelling Tunnels, Embankments, Walls and Fences for Model Railways E-Book

David Tisdale

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Whether in a rural or urban setting, the addition of railway infrastructure can transform a train set into a railway layout. Modelling Tunnels, Embankments, Walls and Fences for Model Railways demonstrates how to build these essential features and place them into a railway layout. It describes the unique challenges, techniques and materials for each element, and provides plenty of practical advice on how to realistically model these crucial aspects of a landscape. Topics include: incorporating topographical features into a layout, from planning to execution; the importance of baseboard construction and track laying when modelling a landscape; practical considerations and techniques for building tunnels; the use of vegetation, animals and small buildings to bring layouts to life and finally, the use of ready-to-plant items, and kit- and scratch-building techniques. An essential guide to creating realistic infrastructure that will be of great interest to railway modellers who have progressed to the stage of making their own scenery and geographical features. Superbly illustrated with 330 colour photographs.

Leseprobe

MODELLING TUNNELS,

EMBANKMENTS, WALLS AND FENCES

FOR MODEL RAILWAYS

DAVID TISDALE

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© David Tisdale 2017

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 329 5

CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1: RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE

CHAPTER 2: ADDING REALISTIC INFRASTRUCTURE TO MODEL RAILWAYS

CHAPTER 3: CREATING TUNNELS

CHAPTER 4: BUILDING EMBANKMENTS

CHAPTER 5: CONSTRUCTING WALLS

CHAPTER 6: INSTALLING FENCES

CHAPTER 7: DETAILING MODEL RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE

RESOURCES

INDEX

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

The concept for this book came from observing many layouts at numerous model railway shows across the country. When Crowood presented me with a number of possible subjects for a new title, the idea of writing about some of the key elements of railway infrastructure leapt out. I am fascinated by railway engineering, both historic and modern, and this interest inspired this book.

This book was written as a guide for both the beginner and seasoned railway modeller, to provide helpful hints and tips for the creation of more visually accurate and realistic railway infrastructure on a model layout. Careful construction of a model railway, with prototypically modelled infrastructure and landscape, contributes to a more believable representation of the real world. Realistic modelling of the infrastructure and the ways in which the railway relates to the landscape is the factor that will differentiate your model railway from a train set.

Fig. 1 The use of realistic railway infrastructure enhances the appearance of a model railway; this is ‘Leamington Spa’ in O-gauge by Pete Waterman.

I have constructed a number of layouts in various scale and gauge combinations, including O-16.5, OO, OO9 and N-gauge, both on an individual basis and as part of a team at my local model railway club, Jersey Model Railway Club. With this experience in mind, I thought it might be beneficial to other railway modellers if I could provide some tips and guidance based on my experience, for the creation of tunnels, embankments, walls and fences for the ‘average railway modeller’ (to borrow a well-known phrase from Railway Modeller).

All of the techniques described in this book have been utilized by me on my own layouts, or on club layouts, unless otherwise stated. My colleagues Derek Lawrence, Tim Pollard and Pete Waterman have all been kind enough to allow me to take a few pictures of their own layouts to use as examples in this book. I hope therefore to be able to offer my thoughts on what does and does not work for me and encourage you, the reader, to try out some of these ideas on your own layouts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to convey my thanks to my fellow railway modellers at the Jersey Model Railway Club for their support, advice and encouragement during the preparation of this book. In particular, I would like to thank Derek Lawrence and Tim Pollard for allowing me to photograph their layouts to illustrate some of the features described in this book.

A special thank you is also due to our Honorary Club President Pete Waterman for allowing me to visit his fantastic Leamington Spa layout and use a couple of photographs of this layout as examples of what can be achieved in realistic infrastructure modelling in O-gauge.

Finally, I would especially like to thank my wife and family for tolerating my model railway stuff all over the house and for their support and encouragement during the preparation of this book.

David Tisdale

St Ouen, Jersey

CHAPTER ONE

RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE

The construction of railways with steam locomotive traction began in the early nineteenth century and a fundamental aspect of the development of the railways was the establishment of appropriate infrastructure to allow the railway lines to extend from one location to the next. Generally speaking, the infrastructure had to be designed to allow relatively easy movement of the locomotive and rolling stock along the track.

Railways were built to serve communities and the routes did not necessarily follow a straight line between two points. Aspiring railway companies, their supporters and financiers, as well as local landowners and other vested interests, all had their own reasons for influencing the course of the route, either to keep railways away from their land, or conversely to bring the railway close to their village, town, city or industrial site, so that they might benefit from the railway’s presence and communication with the wider world. As a consequence, many of the original railway routes tended to wind their way between population centres and industrial sites and not necessarily by the most direct or efficient route.

Fig. 2 Railway expansion provided Victorian workers with the opportunity for day trips and holidays to the coast, leading to the development of stations and resorts such as Dawlish, UK.

The railways were seen as a stimulus to development of both population centres and industrial sites, such as mines, quarries, harbours, iron works, mills and manufacturing sites. The coming of the railways had a profound effect on society and the countryside. The railways facilitated the increased exploitation and export of raw materials and manufactured goods, as well as leading to a massive social revolution by enabling the movement of people to urban areas to work at the factories and industrial sites.

Fig. 3 Commuter train at the central station, Florence, Italy; urban railways and commuting represent the modern way of life for many.

As the railways developed, the mass movement of people – for both social and recreational purposes – became more common. The railways afforded huge numbers of people, who had previously been confined by poor transport links to their local area, the opportunity to travel and experience other parts of the country. Most notably in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this was associated with the development of the concept of ‘a day at the seaside’.

Fig. 4 The construction of the Channel Tunnel was one of the single largest railway projects in the history of the UK system; here, a section through one of the running tunnels is recreated at The National Railway Museum, York, UK.

Fig. 5 The Old Red Sandstone cliffs of the South Devon coast, UK, presented a major geological challenge to the development of the railway.

Despite the best efforts of a certain doctor in the 1960s, the railways continue to provide a critical transport network across the UK, transporting freight and people for both business and leisure reasons. Recently, the network has seen the development of the Channel Tunnel and high-speed rail link (HS1) from central London to mainland Europe, as well as intensive development of new rail infrastructure to serve the large population centres. That infrastructure is only now starting to see significant investment to upgrade and expand a system that still relies in many places on an infrastructure that was laid down by the pioneer railway engineers during the nineteenth century.

INFLUENCE OF THE NATURAL LANDSCAPE

Whilst early railway development was predicated on the requirement to improve transportation links, and to speed up the time taken to move people and goods between points, the route of each railway line between the known points was also heavily influenced by the topography through which it had to travel. The physical challenges presented by the landscape formed part of the early planning and assessment of route viability. The local geology, or rock types, as well as the shape and form of the landscape, referred to as its geomorphology, were critical elements that had to be assessed in route selection by the early railway engineers.

GEOLOGY

The local geology of the area through which the railway was planned would be one of the most important physical constraints that the early railway engineers had to tackle. The rock type influenced a number of critical aspects of the railway line construction, from the selection of a route to provide a solid foundation for the track bed, to the choice of method to build the railway through the landscape using a combination of cuttings, tunnels, embankments and bridges or viaducts.

The local rock types in many areas were also used as the raw materials to form the railway infrastructure. Along railway routes, stone was often quarried to build features such as bridges and viaducts, or clay may have been dug and used to form embankments.

In areas of hard rock – for example, the distinctive Old Red Sandstone in Devon – the engineers had to find innovative solutions. On the famous coastal section near Dawlish in Devon, the railway was in places established on ledges cut in to the rock, and tunnels were driven through the headlands in order to thread the railway through.

Fig. 6 The Settle and Carlisle route negotiates some of the most dramatic scenery on the UK railway network. It threw up some enormous engineering challenges, necessitating the construction of tunnels, embankments and viaducts.

At the other extreme is the example of east Norfolk, where the railway line between Norwich and Great Yarmouth crosses the flat low-lying coastal plain. There was no hard rock support for the railway track bed; most of the route of the railway in this area had to be formed across waterlogged and low-lying marshes. In this instance the track bed was supported across the former coastal marshes on a low embankment, to keep it above the flood level. On this route the railway engineers had to look at alternative ways of supporting the railway infrastructure, including the use of timber baulks laid on the soft clay ground to support the railway embankment.

GEOMORPHOLOGY

The form of the landscape through which the railway line passes is, naturally, a function of the geology. The shape of the landscape is a function of a number of physical processes, such as wind, water and ice (glaciers), which have carved, eroded and deposited the underlying geology to form the shapes that are visible today. The influence of man has also to a lesser extent helped form the shape of the land in the last 100 years or so, but at the time when railway construction began, this impact was less noticeable.

The geomorphology determined a number of key elements of the railway construction. The presence of hills and valleys along the route of the railways presented physical challenges to railway engineers that would have had a time and cost impact on the development of the railway line.

Many routes were selected to reduce where possible the need for the expensive and time-consuming construction of engineering infrastructure, such as tunnels, bridges and viaducts, or creating earthworks such as cuttings and embankments. However, on some routes and in some locations there would have been no choice, which has resulted in the legacy of some excellent Victorian engineering, including Brunel’s Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash and Box Tunnel, and the equally impressive grand viaducts, tunnels and embankments on the Settle to Carlisle line of the former Midland Railway.

ENGINEERING CHALLENGES IN EARLY RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT

ENGINEERING PIONEERS

The advent of the railways led to the rise of the brilliant railway engineer. There was a need for visionary technicians to plan, design and then construct the substantial infrastructure of the railway system, much of which still forms the foundations of the modern railway network. Engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, father and son George and Robert Stephenson, Joseph Locke and Thomas Telford are just some of the key people responsible for the development of the Victorian railway networks.

The works of George and Robert Stephenson in the north-east of England included the construction of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the first public railway in the world, which kick-started the rapid development of the railway infrastructure of the UK during the Victorian period.

Fig. 7 One of Brunel’s greatest railway engineering projects was the construction of the Royal Albert Bridge, completed in 1859, over the River Tamar at Saltash near Plymouth, UK.

Fig. 8 The coastal route between Teignmouth and Dawlish in Devon, UK, was another feat of Victorian railway engineering pioneers.

As a Great Western Railway fan and an engineer myself, I find the railway engineering exploits of Brunel particularly inspiring. One of the best-known Victorian pioneers, Brunel was responsible for the significant development of the railway infrastructure of the Great Western Railway. His broad-gauge (7 feet and ¼ inch) Bristol to London railway, which included the hugely impressive Box Tunnel, was constructed to minimize the impact of gradients and curves, to accommodate the ever-increasing speed of the trains. His other notable railway engineering feats included working with his father on the construction of one of the first tunnels beneath the River Thames and the development of the tunnelling shield as a construction method to protect workers at the tunnel face. This tunnel now forms part of the London Underground network and is still in use today. The tunnel shield technique was the forerunner of modern tunnelboring machines.

Perhaps one of Brunel’s most iconic railway engineering projects was the construction of the Royal Albert Bridge over the Tamar, west of Plymouth, which carries the railway between Devon and Cornwall. In the same part of the UK, the construction of the series of tunnels to carry first his experimental atmospheric railway and then, when that failed, a more traditional steam locomotive-powered railway line between Exeter and Teignmouth, along the east coast of Devon at Dawlish, is perhaps one of the most scenic settings in the country.

Another first for Brunel was the construction of the Severn Tunnel, which, when completed, was the longest railway tunnel in the UK, at over 4 miles (around 6.5km) long. It remained a record-holder for over 100 years, until the construction of the tunnels as part of the HS1 route into London.

To paraphrase the words of Biddle & Nock (1983), the creation of the railway infrastructure during the Victorian period – including, among other things, the development of the attendant tunnels, cuttings, embankments and trackside buildings – all together comprised one of the greatest construction projects ever undertaken in the UK. The end result was probably the most significant change that had ever occurred on the face of the country, happening faster and more completely than anything before – and, some might argue, since.

By the end of the nineteenth century the UK had some 19,000 miles of track, 9,000 stations, 60,000 bridges, 1,000 tunnels, and hundreds of viaducts and trackside buildings, ranging from warehouses and engine sheds to signal boxes and crossing keepers’ cottages (after Biddle & Nock, 1983).

TRACK BED

The railway engineer’s job was, and still is, to ensure that the track bed is constructed in such a way as to optimize train movement. The aim should be to make the ride and route as easy as possible for the rolling stock, taking out significant changes in gradient or at least reducing them to an acceptable trafficable level without resorting to additional traction measures such as cog-drive systems. On some routes, this is not possible – as can be seen on a number of routes on the Swiss railway system and in the UK on the Snowdon Mountain Railway – but these are the exceptions rather than the norm.

Fig. 9 The Snowdon Mountain Railway is one of the few examples in the UK where trains have to make use of a central rack-and-pinion cog system to aid traction up the steep gradients of the track bed.

Building a relatively level track bed, in order to smooth out the steeper gradients, necessitated the design and construction of engineering infrastructure, such as embankments, cuttings, tunnels, bridges and viaducts. The focus of this book is on two of these infrastructure solutions: embankments and tunnels. Embankments are used to build up the track bed across low-lying areas, while tunnels are used to get the track bed through physical barriers such as hills and mountains. They are also used to traverse urban areas, where land use is much denser and land values are higher, and burying underneath is the only viable option.

The planning of a model railway layout has already been covered in great depth by many authors who are more qualified than I am, so their work is recommended for general layout planning guidance. For advice on planning with specific reference to the formation of the track bed and the creation of the necessary infrastructure required to support that track bed, see Chapter 2.

GRADIENTS

Reference to Scott (1972) indicates that, in the case of the Great Western Railway, the track bed gradient design was broken down into three classifications in order to apply a description to the routes:

• Shallow gradients: track bed between 1 in 340 and 1 in 660;

• Steeper gradients: track bed

• Very steep gradients: track bed less

This grouping of gradients is for use on the prototype and not for model railways, but it gives an indication of what needs to be considered when setting out a track bed on a model railway. Chapter 4 includes a section on calculating the length of track bed that will be needed to construct suitable gradients for a model railway, along with some examples for reference.

TUNNELLING

The use of tunnels by railway engineers was usually confined to areas where the track bed could not be easily accommodated via an alternative route on cuttings and/or embankments, or in an urban area where the only option through the area, without demolition of properties, was to tunnel beneath. However, in more modern late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century railway engineering works, the use of tunnels is often adopted as a way of reducing the environmental impact of the railway on the landscape and to access areas that are already heavily developed, such as city centres.

One good example of a more recent use of tunnels is the route of HS1 in the southern part of the UK, connecting the Channel Tunnel with the international rail terminus at St Pancras Station in central London. Other examples would be the proposed HS2 route northwards from London and the Crossrail project in the south-east of the UK around London; these projects include a significant use of tunnels to take the railway development through urban areas, and, in the case of HS1 and HS2, areas of outstanding natural beauty, where the aim is to preserve the landscape for the future.

Fig. 10 In urban areas, railways often use tunnels to access stations in the city centre, such as here at the central station in Hamburg, Germany.

The environmental constraints that confront modern railway engineering works were less relevant during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, when the bulk of the railway network of the UK was constructed by the Victorians. The use of tunnels was, and still is, an expensive option, both in terms of time and money to build and also in terms of the risk to the people building the railway.

Chapter 3 covers in more detail some worked examples of the construction of tunnels, and considers features such as wing walls and portals. It also looks at the types of materials used for lining of the tunnels; the use of ventilation shafts, in particular, with respect to tunnels in model form; and the need to consider how to access the tracks in a tunnel for track cleaning and recovery of derailed rolling stock.

Tunnels may be used on a model railway for a variety of purposes: for example, to act as a scenic break between different sections of a layout; to disguise the entrance or exit to a fiddle yard; or to hide sharp non-prototypical curves or corners in the track where the size of the layout baseboard is constrained by the place in which it is located.

EMBANKMENTS

Fig. 11 Embankments, such as this example on the Welshpool and Llanfair Caereinon Light Railway in Wales, carry railways across river flood plains or are used as alternatives to bridges across low-lying areas.

Embankments have a number of uses as part of railway infrastructure. They can be used as an alternative to the construction of bridges and viaducts for a railway to cross a low-lying area. These types of structures are built to ensure that where possible the railway track bed is kept at a relatively flat or shallow gradient, to even out the rise and fall of the natural landscape. Embankments have also been used as a method of raising or lowering the track bed between running lines at different levels.

The use of embankments is widespread on the railway network and the structures have been formed from a variety of materials, often determined by the local availability of suitable materials (see the earlier comments about geology). For information on the construction and use of embankments, along with reference to examples, seeChapter 4.

RAILWAY BOUNDARIES

Beyond the construction of the major railway infrastructure to support the track bed, consideration also needs to be given to the land belonging to the railway in which the infrastructure sits, and to the ways in which this land may be defined.

CONSTRUCTING WALLS

There are a number of different wall types that can be included on a layout, including boundary walls and engineering walls, which all form an important part of the railway infrastructure. Walls can be formed from a wide range of material types and their construction is covered in Chapter 5, together with some suggestions and methods of how they might be replicated in model form on a layout. The examples include ready-to-plant structures, construction of kits and scratch-building techniques.

Fig. 12 Retaining walls and bridge abutments frame the western end to Llangollen Station, Wales, as it squeezes between the town and the river.

Fig. 13 At Buckfastleigh Station on the South Devon Railway, the many different fence types reflect the various phases of railway development and preservation.

INSTALLING FENCES

Different fence styles and types are covered in Chapter 6, along with information on how and where they might be used in the real world, and therefore how they might be applied to a model railway layout. A wide range of fence types is covered, with examples used to show how they can be recreated using ready-to-plant items, kits and scratch-building methods.

DETAILING MODEL INFRASTRUCTURE

The final chapter provides some ideas for detailing the infrastructure around the model railway, in order to bring the scene to life. The choice of detail may be governed by the intended setting, but there is no wrong or right way to do it; it is down to personal preference. The extra detail might include vegetation, people and animals for a rural-themed layout; an urban-themed layout might benefit from the addition of details such as litter, graffiti on walls, burnt-out cars and old shopping trolleys.

Each example has been constructed by me, either for one of my own layouts or as part of a club project. They are from both OO-gauge and N-gauge layouts, but the principles of each can be equally applied to other scales.

Fig. 14 The coal yard on my ‘Llanfair & Meifod’ OO-gauge layout: attention to detail helps create a realistic model railway.

CHAPTER TWO

ADDING REALISTIC INFRASTRUCTURE TO MODEL RAILWAYS

PLANNING A LAYOUT

There are a number of extremely helpful texts that cover the planning and building of model railway layouts in great detail, so there is no need to do that here. Two good references for baseboard design and construction are Nigel Burkin, who provides advice on layout construction and design techniques for model railways (Burkin, 2010), and Ron Pybus, who covers the design and building of baseboards (Pybus, 2015).

When planning a model railway layout, modellers nearly always start with a consideration of the track layout and, perhaps most importantly, a determination of what they want to achieve operationally from the layout. However, as well as the track and operational interest, it is equally important to plan the landscape in which the proposed model railway will be set. The landscape and scenery of the layout bring it alive as a representation of the real world and add that level of believability.

PROTOTYPE RESEARCH

If you are planning a layout based on a real location, it would be a good idea to try to obtain and review maps of the location for the period in which the model is to be set. For locations in the UK, there is a wealth of information available from old Ordnance Survey sheets, which can often be picked up from second-hand bookshops or charity shops. Some maps may be available online at a modest cost, or may be obtained from the Local Studies section of your local library (assuming it has not been closed!). If the subject area and timescale of your model are relatively recent, new maps can be purchased from good bookshops or online from a number of suppliers, as well as direct from Ordnance Survey in the UK.

In addition to contemporary maps, old photographs of the subject area can be informative and provide visual evidence for period features that may be added to the layout. In addition to historical photographic information, recent photographs, combined with a site visit if feasible and affordable, will also provide much valuable information, giving a feel for the local area and landscape in which the railway was/is set.

Rural Settings

In a rural setting, there are a number of features to observe and note during a site visit, including some or all of the following:

The size and shape of hills and valleys and the angle of slopes – are they steep or shallow?

The location of rivers and streams, which gives information about the drainage of the area; do bridges and culverts need to be included?

The presence of rock outcrops gives an indication of the underlying geology and will help with an understanding of the shape of the landscape.

The construction of property and field boundaries; if there are walls, are they drystone, dressed stone, rough stone, with or without mortar, or simple brick? If there are fences, what type of fence marks the railway boundary as well as property boundaries?

Look at how the railway infrastructure sits in the landscape. Have cuttings or embankments been used? Are there small occupation bridges and/or grand stone viaducts marching across the scenery?

Fig. 15 A typical rural setting to the railway line; a wealth of landscape and scenic features can be replicated on a model railway to improve realism.

As a geologist and geotechnical engineer, this type of observation was part of my training and formed part of my job. Today, it is a habit that I find difficult to abandon as I travel around the country and it can be very beneficial in terms of coming up with ideas as to how to recreate scenes in model form. However, for most railway modellers, just looking at a few of the basic items will give a good feel for the lie of the land or the topography and character of the area that you intend to represent.

Urban Settings

When considering modelling an urban setting, it is important to realize that some or all of the natural landscape features are likely to be buried, or at least masked by the development of the town or city. However, there are likely to be some features that remain identifiable, as well as characteristics and features that will be more specific to urban areas.

From an information-gathering perspective for modelling, there are a number of features to look out for during a site visit in an urban area:

How has the urban development fitted into the landscape? For example, steeply sloping streets and the presence of retaining walls indicate that the area may have featured hills and valleys before being built up.

The street names in the surrounding area can give clues to the landscape underlying the site; for example, Marsh Lane probably gets its name from an area that was poorly drained before development and might therefore need culverts and drainage channels.

Record the presence of embankments, tunnels and cuttings and how the railway has been built through the development.

Look at the architectural styles of buildings that have been developed in the area around the railway and their relative ages; for example, all new buildings could indicate expansion of development or renewal of older buildings.

Look at the buildings and land adjacent to the railway and their uses; for a layout based on modern-day practices, this can be accessed from photos, plans and even Google Streetview; for a layout based in a specific historical period, old photographs and maps will provide the best sources of information. Again, street names will give clues as to past land uses that may have been in place during the period planned for the layout. For example, Gasworks Street would indicate the presence of a once-common sight in towns in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – a line-side coal gasworks, an industrial activity from the steam age. Such clues to historical land use will give the modeller ideas for his or her layout.

The state of the vegetation – whether it has been maintained or left to overgrow some areas – can be important in setting the time period of a layout.

Litter and rubbish dumped on or adjacent to railway land is a particularly unfortunate phenomenon of the mid- to late twentieth- century railway infrastructure, which can add realism to a layout.

For modern image layouts, it is useful to look at how track layouts have been rationalized; one idea is to model the space where there may have been track, but which has reverted to scrubland, or the land that may have been reclaimed from the railway for another use such as light industrial or even modern residential.

Another particularly useful indicator in modern urban areas is the old railway company building that no longer forms part of the railway infrastructure; in many cases, the buildings and lands have been sold off and are now used for another purpose; this is particularly relevant to many station goods sheds and old engine sheds.

Fig. 16 Extensive stone retaining walls at Teignmouth Station show how the railway has a tightly constrained route in to the town and is typical of many urban railway scenes.

Fig. 17 A busy urban main-line station scene at Hamburg, Germany, with local commuter trains and high-speed ICE trains at the platforms.

If the proposed model railway is not based on a real location, but is intended as a fictional location in a specific area of the country, it might be helpful to think about the general geographical area and era in which the model is set. Is it a 1930s period layout set on the edge of a market town in the border counties of England and Scotland? Is it somewhere in rural mid-Wales in the late nineteenth century? Is it set in the flat, low-lying fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk during the late twentieth century? Such combinations of era and geographical area can provide some focus for the modeller in researching information for a layout, as well as giving good general indicators of land form, the land use in the period in question, and the extent of the railway infrastructure in that period.

The area and time period may be researched using railway company and general regional text books, internet and local resources for photographs, maps, drawings, land use listings, as well as any other information sources that are available. The key features that characterize an area are rock type, the shape of the landscape, industrial buildings, the style of the local buildings, and the colour of the local brick. Look at the railway companies that operated in that area to see how they approached the construction of the key elements of infrastructure.

DRAWING UP A PLAN

A plan for a layout is not essential, but it is a good idea to avoid wasting time and money on trying to build something that may ultimately either not work or meet the operating expectations. A layout plan will probably fall in to one of three categories:

A plan based on a real location and published railway company plan.

A plan based on no specific location, but containing features influenced by real locations, lineside industries, and railway company or regional practices.

A plan that is completely fictitious and freelance; this type of plan is typical of many narrow-gauge layouts.

Fig. 18 Drawing up a sketch plan of the proposed layout allows the modeller to move and change features before committing to building anything – or spending any money! This example is my N-gauge layout ‘Duddeston Junction’.

Once you have a setting in mind for your model railway, you can plan out on paper, or electronically using one of the software packages available, to see how the layout might look and how the urban or rural landscape can be blended in to the layout. Planning using either method allows you to play around with combinations of track and scenery and move features around, without abortive construction work or the cost of wasted materials. Graph paper, a rule and a pencil are the basic layout tools, but an electronic package can offer some interesting possibilities. Whichever method you choose, the point is that you need to be able to change the plan as many times as necessary. The only real cost is your time, and it all adds to the fun of railway modelling.

When considering the third option – planning a layout that is not based on an actual location – it might be useful to list the key features that you would like to include. This list will be governed by personal preference and there is no specific right or wrong as to what features or operational requirements should be represented. Notwithstanding this, though, if you want your layout to be realistic in appearance, as well as representative of a particular railway company, period or region, the plan should recognize the style of railway infrastructure and the scenic setting typically associated with these criteria.

A MODEL RAILWAY IN THE LANDSCAPE

It is important to remember that in the real world the scenery or natural landscape was there long before the railways were even thought about as a method of transport, never mind actually planned and built. In order to make a model railway look more realistic, the aim ought to be, where reasonably practical, to make the track and infrastructure look like they have been built into the scenery or the landscape. It should not look like a flat baseboard with a track, with elements of scenery placed randomly on it as an afterthought and with no connection to each other or to the railway.

Fig. 19 The creation of a freelance narrow-gauge layout, such as my ‘Gylchfan’ OO9 micro-layout, allows the modeller to include a range of features that are not necessarily based on an actual location.

Careful thought at the planning stage as to where the model railway layout is to be set, even as simple a distinction as to whether it is rural or urban, will allow the modeller to make some decisions about the landscape to model. For example, if the layout is to be set in a rural landscape with rolling hills, you will need to take into account the requirements for the gradients. The infrastructure for the railway should be designed to keep the track gradients as shallow as possible. Achieving this in a rolling hilly landscape will demand the use of cuttings or tunnels through hills, and embankments, bridges or viaducts over valleys and low-lying areas. In model form this means thinking about how the scenery will be developed above and below the level of the track bed.

In an urban setting, the railway was often threaded through areas of existing development. In model form this could involve extended embankments or cuttings through the urban area or long viaducts, with other land uses evident on the ground below the viaduct arches.

Fig. 20 Using mapping-type symbols when sketching out a layout plan helps visualize how the 2-D plan will look as a 3-D model; this example is the N-gauge layout ‘Pine Ridge Creek’ built by Jersey Model Railway Club.

When planning layouts, it is a good idea to sketch ideas for the scenery at the same time as the track plan to see what might work and what might not. Using simple map symbols to show areas of raised topography will allow you to visualize what the completed model might look like. The same process can also be achieved with track-planning software, which creates a 3-D image of the intended layout on the screen.

Fig. 21 Constructing card mock-ups of key buildings is a quick and cheap way to work out sizes and layouts before scratch-building the final structures.

Fig. 22 Finalizing the design of the scratch-built factory building on ‘Llanfair & Meifod’, with its complicated roof and angled wall that was needed to fit a restricted site on the layout, was made easier with the trial and error of the card mock-ups first.

To provide emphasis to the 2-D drawing, it might be worth building mock-ups of structures and key features and putting them on the paper plan before cutting any wood or laying any track. When building an extension to my ‘Llanfair & Meifod’ layout, I used this method for the freight interchange section between the narrow-gauge and standard-gauge railway systems, which required the construction of a number of buildings bespoke to the location. My intention was that all the buildings would be either scratch-built or heavily modified kits, rather than ready-to-plant structures. Before starting any work on the buildings, mock-ups were created, to work out the exact size and shape that they would need to be. All the mock-ups were made from thick card, mostly recycled packaging, in true Blue Peter style, with the plain card surface on the outer face of the buildings.

Creating a mock-up for the ‘L’-shaped building was particularly useful in order to get the angles correct for the roof, which also had a truncated corner. It took several attempts cutting the card to get the right shape for the roof profile and to make it look correct. The card building was then disassembled and the card parts used as templates for marking on the embossed plasticard, which was used to form the walls and roof of the final structure.

The key advantage of mock-ups is that they allow you to play around with the shapes of the structures before deciding on the final layout and proceeding to the actual building. The only waste is the pieces of card, which can then go to be recycled.

BASEBOARD CONSTRUCTION

A key element in scenery planning for a model railway is to imagine the area being modelled or the general landscape characteristic features in a fictional setting and then decide how this can be accommodated at the baseboard construction stage. Thinking about the land above and below track-bed level will give a more realistic, rather than a ‘flat-earth’, appearance. It is definitely worth devoting time to the careful planning of a layout prior to construction, as this will all help with getting the landscape right in the final model.

Ron Pybus (2015) gives concise clear guidance on baseboard construction techniques. The following is a summary of the two main approaches: solid or open-frame. Each method has its merits and application and no one is better than the other. I have used both these techniques many times, often together in the same layout.

Fig. 23 A solid baseboard construction with typical 25 x 50mm (1 x 2in) planed softwood frame and a plywood top, with timber cross-bracing and polystyrene infill on the scenic margins of the baseboard to reduce weight.

SOLID BASEBOARD

A solid baseboard is the traditional method of construction and begins with the building of a frame, typically from softwood or plywood. Planed softwood timber 44 x 18mm (nominally 2 x 1in) is a commonly used material and the frame is constructed to the size of the planned baseboard, with suitable cross-bracing. Gluing and screwing all joints, using good-quality wood glue and 50–75mm wood screws, gives the best long-term joint construction and the strongest. Skimping on the quality of products at this stage will result in a baseboard that is highly likely to warp or to come apart with age.

With the frame built, a surface board is required. Various wood products can be used, with the choice often being down to personal preference. I like to use good-quality plywood of 6mm or 9mm thickness, although occasionally 12mm thickness is better for larger board areas to give added strength and rigidity. Plywood is relatively light and provides a strong base on which to build a layout.