A Quick Diversion?

Life is busy and modelling is taking a back seat. Oh, you'd noticed?

On Summer evenings it is just too tempting to don the Lycra and jump on the bike, or else to grab the camera. Summer is also when clients decide that they desperately need my team's professional services. On top of those normal Summer distractions I've got a very busy ten days planned in Australia next month that I need to do a lot of preparation for. For instance I need to persuade a coach load of  Australian IT professionals that they want nothing more than to punctuate their planned tour of vineyards with a trip on the Puffing Billy.

Behind the scenes I'm doing a lot of thinking. No major changes of plan but I'm considering how I can get the maximum return for my efforts.

Meanwhile the original Apa diorama is sat on my desk with all its faults staring me in the face.

I suspect the time has come to admit Apa has served its purpose and needs to be replaced with another desktop project , this time in EM.

What I need at the moment is a quickly constructed model that will let me display the EM good stock I've been building, and my next versions of the Tanat Valley station buildings, which won't be needed for Upwold. Of course I could just cut out the OO track from Apa and replace it with EM, but if I'm going to use it primarily as a catalyst to focus on goods stock then I think I need a plan that will encourage me to do a little shunting, rather than  have an essentially static display.

A plan, in fact, rather like this one that I came up with last year  utilizing two micro traversers/sector plates/turntable butchered from a Peco loco lift and that could still fit in an Apa box.

If I use one of Tim Horn's slightly larger standard 3ft by 1ft laser-cut baseboards  I think I would be able to squeeze in a 4whl loco + 2 wagons traverser at one end and a loco + 1 wagon at the other. In an ideal world it would be nice to reproduce an Inglenook shunting puzzle. Possibly it can be done if I go for a 3-2-2 version. Unlike a traditional Inglenook though I want to make provision for a brakevan, and for the train arriving on set with the loco at the front.