Saturday 6 October 2012

Apa Junction

I have a number of schemes in mind to fit into these useful storage boxes.  Apa Junction is my first attempt at 4mm standard gauge modelling since....well since my original Triang OO gauge trainset I got for my sixth birthday with  "Albert Hall" and three Pullman coaches.

The prototype inspiration for the layout is the Tanat Valley Light Railway. This delightful little Welsh line has a number of things in its favour. Notably it has been extremely well documented in Mike Lloyd's Wild Swan monograph, secondly it featured lots of corrugated iron buildings, for which I have a strange weakness, and thirdly Mike's book for once includes copious drawings of those structures; Too many books on full size railways seem to ignore the fact that a sizable part of their readership is interested in modelling.

The Tanat Valley has been modelled many times before, in particular there is an exquisite 2mm version of it, but then as I said in the introduction to this blog you aren't going to find much that is original here.

I have a vague recollection that John Allison, the doyen of Warley Model Railway Club, built an O gauge small space modern image layout based on Blodwell quarry, whicgh was served by the TVLR.

I've chosen to set the line in the period just pre-Beeching, which seems reasonable given the real life chronology of the line. The main location that it is based on is Blodwell Junction, but obviously compromise is the name of the game given the dimension it has to fit in.

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