Seen as a pending house move is on the cards in the near future the biggie layout has been put on hold , but in the meantime planning permission with the domestic authorities has been given for a 8ft x 4ft portable layout .
The CBSCR has always had an attraction for me since 1989 when santy got me 2 trainsets and a CBSCR vol 2 book by Colm Creedon (must have been a good boy that year!!!). Over the years since i added a few more books about the line, thru the 1990's i spent, many a happy day walking the old trackbed, so its about time i tried to bring back a little bit of it in model form .
A little alternative history
Instead of the line being lifted, thanks to huge public support and a victory in the high court the mainline from Cork to Bantry was left open while sadly the lines to Clonakilty, Courtmacsherry and Baltimore were closed and lifted. For a few years a full passenger and freight service was in operation but further losses led to the loss of passenger servicesand all freight except beet traffic. Thankfully the opening of a new oil terminal in Bantry led to a new 7 days a week freight serviceto service the terminal and added to this more trains too Ballinacourty and the line wss saved.
Fast forward a few more years and the arrival of the Celtic tiger led to a demand for passenger services which following an upgrade to the line were re introduced, added to this new timber flows to Waterford and two new beet handling depots made the line quite busy.
Back to the layout
While looking into which station to model Clon junction was the first choice but after a little time messing with pencil and paper it became quite clear that it d be neigh on impossible to squeeze it in without loosing the feel of the station. So the second choice was to be it.
I ll be using peco code 100 track, all the buildings are long gone but armed with good pics they ll be the easy part, the other structures will all also need to be scratchbuilt using plasticard.