Friday 12 April 2024

Paxton Road. Change here for trains to Gerallt Road

 After a lot of delays, sorting out family issues and the aftermath of the house move, we finally made the trip to Wales to pick up Gerald Road from James Hilton.

It is the first time I've been back to Wales since my pre-Covid canal trip on the Monty, so we also took the opportunity to revisit Llangollen and Pontcysyllte.
















We proved, something  I didn't think about until rather late in the day, that the layout can fit across the back seat of the car with the dogs in the boot. Just in case it ever gets to an exhibition.




One thing that strikes you about a visit to James's workshop is just how small his N gauge cameos are. It actually takes a few moments to process this. Gerald Road seems vast in comparison.

So, apart from moving its fictional location from Bristol to the Tanat Valley, what are my plans for it?

Well, the first stage is to do nothing until I've lived with it for a few weeks. I want to retain some elements of the original sketch, especially the mix of industrial and residential structures and the level crossing. Two aspects that I really want to think through are the huge, relatively speaking amount of foreground and the scenic wings. I suppose there is a third, which is what traffic will the sidings serve.

Zooming back to the other side of the country I have Middleton Towers in mind. A "bitsa" station, a level crossing, a lime kiln, a relatively modern aggregate loader of some sort, and then the foreground siding for general goods and domestic coal


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