Trackplan again!

Between Christmas and New Year there are always moments of quiet thought for me, and during one of these i looked at the track plan for PnC. The first track plan i ever came up with was for a T shaped junction, and being T shaped had a junction in the track plan with the station being at the base of the T on a pier. This plan was pretty impractical, i can't see many exhibition managers liking a T shaped layout, so with this in mind i redesigned it, but still wanted it to be different.

Then i came up with the curved plan that I have now. This smaller (ish) plan meant that the junction was lost, and that was the main aspect i had associated with the station in the little bit of the Scottish Highlands i have floating around in my head! So, i got to thinking about things, firstly what the coastline would have looked like before any railway was built there...

This is based on the coastline of Plockton (albeit juggled about a little). The dotted line indicates where the two lines are supposed to be located. The area where they join is to the right of the goods yard. This plan shows two areas where the line would need building up, the first is the area after the tidal inlet on the left of the plan (crossed by a steel bridge), this section is where the 'old quay' falls. This is intended to be a stone quay used for minerals etc. to goods ships.

The area in the bottom right area of the plan is where the station is located. This is also the site of the 'new quay', this is to be stone with a wood pier to enable steamers to moor closer to the land. This is area didn't quite seem to fit it when it was based on Portree, so i've decided to make the whole layout more like Plockton and have it more barren as the plan and cross section below show. The large building behind the station is a church.

I prefer the arrangement of this end now, and will stick with this as i think it will give a better overall impression of being in a barren area. Plus the church would have been an obstacle for the railway to be built around so the idea of a line being squeezed along the coast still applies.

With regards to the junction i've decided to run the second line along the side of the road out of Port na Cailliche like the roadside section on the Glyn Valley Tramway (a scene i've always wanted to model). I think this incorporates the second line in a way that keeps operatingfun by having to run back from the station to the goods yard still, and not overcrowded the layout. The area behind the line where the crofts are will have to be rethought, i'm going to draw the layout out full size before any work starts. It may be that the line in red below doesn't run the length of the layout, and disappears between a couple of crofts long before reaching the area of the tidal inlet.

Dunbracken is progressing well, and has to be complete for its first exhibition as an operating layout at Tonbridge on February 14th. After this i shall start far more serious work on PnC with baseboard construciton beginning sometime shortly after the exhibition.

I'm looking to sell Dunbracken, so if anyone fancies rehoming it for a modest fee then please let me know. You can keep up to date with its completion on RMweb here.