5
50050 Fearless
Guest
Those of you on RMWeb may have already seen this layout thread, but for everyone else - this is the opening plans for my first trip into layout building, a OO gauge layout set on the south coast of Cornwall.
So here goes with the backstory: Port Penare (that name might still change) is a heritage railway station on the South coast of Cornwall, just over 10 miles south-west down the coast from St Austell. The town of Penare grew from humble beginnings through the early 1800s into a decent-sized town, and this conicided with the growth and increase in traffic into the town's burdgeoning port. With the natural topography of the coast providing an ideal natural deepwater dock for ships, it grew to become a partial rival to the Penzance port, as well as the larger ports at Southampton and Liverpool. It's big trump card was berthing costs - a fraction of it's rivals, because of it's relatively smaller size.
Hence, through the 1800s, passenger liners and freight ships were in regular supply at the port. The Great Western Railway combined this with it's growing reputation as being an excellent transporter of perishable freight to locations far inland, and built a branch spur from St Austell, heading down to Penare. Unlike many other branches in the area, it was double-track, to cater for any increase in freight/passenger workings to the port.
Whilst services did grow steadily, the popularity of the port started to decline after WW2, with the rise in air and car travel, and slowly, its relevance faded. It remained a popular destination for spotters and rail enthusiasts, as whilst the main 12-coach expresses continued on to Penzance, most shorter trains that shedded coaches at Plymouth terminated in Penare, and it occasionally even gained it's own sleeper train, the Bayside Sleeper, to complement the early departing passenger cruise ships. So large express locomotives would often be seen in the station, with the catch being that they would often not be hauling a full-length express train - or rather, had been, up until Plymouth.
Predictably, Dr Beeching didn't see the romance in this story, and it was assigned for closure under his infamous cuts, with an initial closure date set of 1965. However, although the port had declined in usage, several local shipyard owners contested this decision, saying that the line was an important source of freight and materials for them in a rural location more difficult to access by road. Also, there was an emphasis still on mail/parcels traffic that remained a lifeblood to the town. So whilst passenger services were slashed to a bare minimum, freight traffic remained in regular supply, and in the summer, holiday services operated for holidaymakers heading to the seaside a mile or two up the coast. In the grand tradition, these were operated by mainline express trains - initially during the early 1970s by Class 52 'Westerns' handled the service, before being phased out and replaced by Class 50s.
The final death knell for the line came when the Parcels Sector began cutting back operations, meaning that the mail aspect of the line was rendered redundant. With most of the port also closing, the line was closed for good in 1979. However, due to the precarious nature of the line (with it's threat of closure having loomed for over a decade beforehand), a group of local businessmen and enthusiasts bandied together to ensure that the railway would enter private ownership upon closure, and the Cornish Riviera Railway was formed in early 1980. With the locomotive preservation movement now well underway, they quickly began sourcing locomotives, with the three first arrivals all coming from the Barry scrapyard, but as the 1980s wore on and diesel locomotives began to be phased out, the roster took diesel locomotives under their wing. Nowadays, all the services the line was popular for are now covered, plus some that never featured, including preserved EMUs on push-pull services. The station buildings along the line, including Port Penare, have pretty much been kept in the condition they were when the line closed, having remained in that state since the late 1950s anyway.
Right, that's the backstory done with (if any of you are thinking 'he's got too much time on his hands' you'd probably be right), now time to explain how things are going thus far. The layout will take up two walls in an L shape, a fiddleyard-to-terminus format. The length along the far wall, where the station will go, is 14ft, with the length along the other wall coming in at 11ft. The fiddleyard baseboard will be 1ft wide, and the rest of the layout will be 20inches wide, with the exception of the slightly angled station baseboard, coming out to 33 inches wide as it butts up against the wall. There's no final trackplan drawn up yet, although I have a plan of four/five platforms, with one dedicated to freight/mail traffic, and the platforms will be about four coaches long. Carriage sidings will be included too, with stored stock in there, and it'll be assumed that any locomotives head up the line about a mile for a small engine shed/depot (much like Long Rock TMD) to be turned on a turntable up there off-scene, so there'll be no turntable on this layout.
I said I have no final trackplan drawn up, although I have a pencil sketch that is pretty close to the final deal. Here it is :
Overall plan:
track plan 001 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
Detail of the station area:
track plan 002 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
Detail of the station throat and carriage sidings. Note also the signal box on the far side of the layout:
track plan 003 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
Detail of the station throat and lead-in, including scenic break and fiddle yard.
track plan 004 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
NOTE: This sketch is only roughly to scale. I'm aware the fiddleyard and carriage sidings are a bit on the short side on that drawing
I invite you all to put forward any suggestions or improvements, and particularly anyone who is knowledgable in layout design software, I'd love to have some input from you folks.
More updates as and when they come up, stay tuned...
So here goes with the backstory: Port Penare (that name might still change) is a heritage railway station on the South coast of Cornwall, just over 10 miles south-west down the coast from St Austell. The town of Penare grew from humble beginnings through the early 1800s into a decent-sized town, and this conicided with the growth and increase in traffic into the town's burdgeoning port. With the natural topography of the coast providing an ideal natural deepwater dock for ships, it grew to become a partial rival to the Penzance port, as well as the larger ports at Southampton and Liverpool. It's big trump card was berthing costs - a fraction of it's rivals, because of it's relatively smaller size.
Hence, through the 1800s, passenger liners and freight ships were in regular supply at the port. The Great Western Railway combined this with it's growing reputation as being an excellent transporter of perishable freight to locations far inland, and built a branch spur from St Austell, heading down to Penare. Unlike many other branches in the area, it was double-track, to cater for any increase in freight/passenger workings to the port.
Whilst services did grow steadily, the popularity of the port started to decline after WW2, with the rise in air and car travel, and slowly, its relevance faded. It remained a popular destination for spotters and rail enthusiasts, as whilst the main 12-coach expresses continued on to Penzance, most shorter trains that shedded coaches at Plymouth terminated in Penare, and it occasionally even gained it's own sleeper train, the Bayside Sleeper, to complement the early departing passenger cruise ships. So large express locomotives would often be seen in the station, with the catch being that they would often not be hauling a full-length express train - or rather, had been, up until Plymouth.
Predictably, Dr Beeching didn't see the romance in this story, and it was assigned for closure under his infamous cuts, with an initial closure date set of 1965. However, although the port had declined in usage, several local shipyard owners contested this decision, saying that the line was an important source of freight and materials for them in a rural location more difficult to access by road. Also, there was an emphasis still on mail/parcels traffic that remained a lifeblood to the town. So whilst passenger services were slashed to a bare minimum, freight traffic remained in regular supply, and in the summer, holiday services operated for holidaymakers heading to the seaside a mile or two up the coast. In the grand tradition, these were operated by mainline express trains - initially during the early 1970s by Class 52 'Westerns' handled the service, before being phased out and replaced by Class 50s.
The final death knell for the line came when the Parcels Sector began cutting back operations, meaning that the mail aspect of the line was rendered redundant. With most of the port also closing, the line was closed for good in 1979. However, due to the precarious nature of the line (with it's threat of closure having loomed for over a decade beforehand), a group of local businessmen and enthusiasts bandied together to ensure that the railway would enter private ownership upon closure, and the Cornish Riviera Railway was formed in early 1980. With the locomotive preservation movement now well underway, they quickly began sourcing locomotives, with the three first arrivals all coming from the Barry scrapyard, but as the 1980s wore on and diesel locomotives began to be phased out, the roster took diesel locomotives under their wing. Nowadays, all the services the line was popular for are now covered, plus some that never featured, including preserved EMUs on push-pull services. The station buildings along the line, including Port Penare, have pretty much been kept in the condition they were when the line closed, having remained in that state since the late 1950s anyway.
Right, that's the backstory done with (if any of you are thinking 'he's got too much time on his hands' you'd probably be right), now time to explain how things are going thus far. The layout will take up two walls in an L shape, a fiddleyard-to-terminus format. The length along the far wall, where the station will go, is 14ft, with the length along the other wall coming in at 11ft. The fiddleyard baseboard will be 1ft wide, and the rest of the layout will be 20inches wide, with the exception of the slightly angled station baseboard, coming out to 33 inches wide as it butts up against the wall. There's no final trackplan drawn up yet, although I have a plan of four/five platforms, with one dedicated to freight/mail traffic, and the platforms will be about four coaches long. Carriage sidings will be included too, with stored stock in there, and it'll be assumed that any locomotives head up the line about a mile for a small engine shed/depot (much like Long Rock TMD) to be turned on a turntable up there off-scene, so there'll be no turntable on this layout.
I said I have no final trackplan drawn up, although I have a pencil sketch that is pretty close to the final deal. Here it is :
Overall plan:
track plan 001 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
Detail of the station area:
track plan 002 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
Detail of the station throat and carriage sidings. Note also the signal box on the far side of the layout:
track plan 003 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
Detail of the station throat and lead-in, including scenic break and fiddle yard.
track plan 004 by 50050 Fearless, on Flickr
NOTE: This sketch is only roughly to scale. I'm aware the fiddleyard and carriage sidings are a bit on the short side on that drawing
I invite you all to put forward any suggestions or improvements, and particularly anyone who is knowledgable in layout design software, I'd love to have some input from you folks.
More updates as and when they come up, stay tuned...