Starting out
Second time around?
Many years ago I built a simple N-gauge layout that was about the size of a single bed and consisted of a single loop and a few sidings. It was all built starting with second hand gear. It was a bit of a hodgepodge of euro-US stock. Hey, I was a teen without any cash and based in NZ. Anyway, I enjoyed the building of it.
I decided many years later to revisit this hobby and this time build in all the things I couldn’t afford/find back then. I also wanted it to be based on some kind of prototypical location. And I wanted to use OO-gauge.
What I want
So here I am starting my journey by hunting for existing or disused stations that had some features I wanted to model. Namely:
- British steam
- A viaduct
- A waterway
- Double track, if possible
- Not a terminus (so I could do a continuous loop)
- An interesting looking station
- A decent name
That meant trawling through a few key sites until I hit something I liked. The best one is Disused Stations which is a trove of a surprisingly large number of stations that Beeching closed. 2208 as of writing. There are 80 stations just under A.
As I wanted a viaduct, I tried to shortcut the search a bit with Wikipedia for a shorter list of 80. Interestingly, Saddleworth wasn’t in that list so it just proves that old adage “There are lies, damned lies, statistics, then the cesspool of disinformation called the Internet”
Anyrant, I came up with the following shortlist:
- Scalby
- Saddleworth
- Shuncliffe
- Fordham
- Little Mill
- Sprouston
- Narborough and Pentney
- Sherwood
- Earby
- Elslack
- Litton Cessbrook
- Millers Dale
Millers Dale was someone’s project in N that you can see here.
Not sure exactly why I choose Saddleworth in the end. I suspect it was an unconscious choice to pick the most complex intertwining of river, canal and viaduct with skew arches so that this project would take at least 10 years.
Now that I had a location in mind, I needed to pull together all the elements of a layout build. Starting from research and moving to planning. Then on to the baseboards and the trackwork. Next comes electrics and DCC configuration. Lots to look forward to.
Next Step: Let’s research this place.
