For a while now it’s been apparent that my plan to build a slice of Florencecourt won’t happen immediately, as I just don’t have 12’ of convenient space to put up the main board fed by fiddles either end. But I was feeling rather guilty about the three baseboards and trestles I’d built two years ago for the project. I also really need some kind of layout on which to test out locos and stock - even just a bit of back and forth. Much head scratching and I realised I could use one of the boards to make an Iain Rice cameo, with two tracks fed by a cassette fiddle. This can stay up more or less permanently in the workshop. So a busy morning at our local community woodwork facility saw the carcass made……and painted in SLNC station colour of grey/blue.
So if I can’t model Florencecourt - for all its simplicity - what on earth can I model? Why Enniskillen of course! Sounds lunacy but check out…..https://www.carendt.com/micro-layout-design-gallery/passenger-lines/ The Farthing layouts are also inspiring….https://farthinglayouts.blogspot.com/ - layouts built as various sections of a station.
I had initially thought of modelling a segment of Dromahair goods yard to allow a shunting puzzle but that would rule out passenger ops. Then I recalled dear old Carl Arendt’s micro terminals as above. So I can model a section of the SLNC bay at Enniskillen. There was no run round so quite prototypical for trains to run in and propel out. The canopy will be at rear of layout - just have to work out how to imply that the station continues beyond !
Trains will be short but it’s better than no layout!! And in any case I am more of a rolling stock constructor than an operator at heart. With some thought and care, I could run the full SLNC timetable with the right stock. After all most services were by railbus so quite short in length - and the goods services would often shunt as far as the dock platform. Thus lots of scope for meaningful minimal space operation.
Unlike anything I have done before this is straight out of Rice’s cameo layout book in terms of planning from day 1, rather than the suck it and see approach of previous efforts. Shunting, for instance, will be hands off - no space for electro-magnets so I am not using AJs. I have ordered a batch of Flippems from our own @Bob49 and when those arrive I will start experimenting with magnet placement.