Coal Mine Railway - Imaginary B&O spur.

[TCWORLD]

I've been thinking about the question of "what has the last layout taught me" and I think the last layout was very much a cram everything in style wise as i could. I think that ended up with me having scenery which didn't at all fit together. There were too many styles and themes and eras, all of which resulted in a very jumbled scene which had no atmosphere to it.

I look at lots of layouts at exhibitions and see that they have very subtle atmospheres to them, which make them more believable as psuedo real worlds. Whereas on my last layout it wasn't, It was confused in what i wanted to show.

For this layout I've spent quite a while planning in my head what its supposed to show, and have worked out what buildings and what styles to stick with, rather than a bit of everything. Im aiming to create something that, to me at least, shows the contrast between the tranquill but desolate area - dry grass, scorched earth, sandy soil, steep sandstone cliff faces - and the destructive noisy dirty industries that sprout out of the landscape like weeds wherever there is a desired resourse like coal.
I have a very clear image in my mind of howthe scenery will take shape, and how each little section joins with the rest iin a single era and atmosphere. I've found a couple of images in Google that very much show the type of terrain I'm aiming to capture in my little model world. (Images: 1, 2). Image 1 is showing the steep rugged desolate cliffs, whereas by contrast Image 2 shows the much more tranquill side: a slow flowing river eating away at the soft sandstone. Between the two of them you should be able to picture the type of soil, colours, and different plant life. If you add to that the destructive side of coal mining, you should get a good idea of what i can picture the layout as being.

Thats what the last layout lacked, an Image. When i was making it, i hadn't got a clear image, and i wasn't sure about what i wanted it to look like. Thats the main reason Its taken me 6 months to plan this new one, I've been thinking over what I want.



In other news, I've built a wooden frame which has been inlayed into the underside of the foam to not only give it support and stop my damaging it, but also to give me something solid to screw the facia and backscene to. The facia has quite tight curves to follow which mean that trying to screw it to the foam wouldn't have been feasible, so I built the frame, made the facia and screwed the two together. I plan to make the scenery come up and over the facia slightly, and will then paint the front to resemble layers of soil and sand.
I've also ordered the turntable, coal tipple, and some WS scatters (brown ballast, burnt grass, earth scatters, yellow grass, coal, etc.). The next thing im planning to aquire is the track to build the hidden return line, so that i can build the scenery at the front up to full height.

I'll post some pics this evening of the facia and frame.