Royal Park- Irish/British 00 Urban Layout

[LNERW1]

Alright, so this is a long term plan, with my other layout, Ardree Quay, taking precedence until completion. This is intended to be a 00 layout with two levels and a cassette yard on either level. It’s intended to be a newer station, built in the 50s to serve the Royal Park housing development, as a spur off a mainline in a large city. The upper level will have SR-style third rail electrification, while the lower level will have overhead. This will allow me to use West Coast and Woodhead electrics, SR EMUs and maybe even @murrayec’s DARTs if I can find one secondhand. I’ve had something like this in mind for a while, but I’ve just bought a Metcalfe kit for a tower block, and so thought I would start it now. I have a sneaking suspicion I have ADHD, so having a few projects on the go means my butterfly mind can hop between without much fuss. I don’t have much spare pointwork at the moment, so I won’t be able to lay much track yet, but I have about 6M of Flexitrack (Code 100) so I think I can begin tracklaying on the lower level. I’ll buy two points to allow for a run round and build a couple loco cassettes. Don’t expect too many updates on this for a while, it’ll stay on the back burner till Ardree is completed.

[Metrovik]

Best of luck lad, good to see someone else was inspired by the Wexford show.

[LNERW1]

Weston Interchange specifically, an urban UK scene, but it was a different kit used on the layout. I mentioned to the guy who built it the Metcalfe kit and he pointed to a stall in the corner and said “I think he has one”. This was at the very end of the show and I got over just in time- the guy was literally packing up as I ran over. The reason I’d been talking to the guy, though, was that I’d had a plan for a tail chaser with a housing estate as the focal point of an inner-suburban junction between an electrified main line and a small branch to a single platform station and a small industry of some kind. It was going to have a housing estate as it’s focal point, and would be called Royal Park. I don’t consider these plans to be for the same layout, as both the general arrangement and the flexibility (The original plan was to have only one type of electrification, as third rail would instantly mark it out as London, and it was to be exclusively GB-based).

[LNERW1]

The board is quite deep, contemplating adding trams? Further marking it as Ireland. I think the third rail should be removable just in case.

[LNERW1]

Fowler House, the Metcalfe kit bought at the show, is progressing nicely. Don't have any photos at hand as I'm typing this up on PC, but rest assured photos to follow.

[Metrovik]

7 hours ago, LNERW1 said:

The board is quite deep, contemplating adding trams? Further marking it as Ireland. I think the third rail should be removable just in case.

It'll all depend on when the layout is set, anytime up until the 90s then most trams will be a bit out of place, I'd think although I'm usually wrong about these things 

[LNERW1]

Time period is going to be roughly mid-80s to modern day- I'll try not to add too many features that mark the time period too precisely, but I will of course operate whatever I like at home (it is intended for portability, as I would like to exhibit it at some point). All electrification is intended to be removable, so the time period(and location) can again be shifted around a bit.

Also, thought I'd share a detailed outline of the layout now, as these details are more or less finalised now. The intention is to have a layered layout, with the levels progressing upwards as follows, with electrification options outlined as well:

Baseboard level: Canal

~1in up: Waterside street scene, with tracks usable as dockside tramway or modern tram system (removable catenary)(may also have removable platform etc, in pavement-like style seen in and around Dublin city centre)(Passing loop on single line)

~4in up: Removable third-rail (London Underground and SR style)(double track)

~7in up: Removable overhead electrification, usable as DART, WCML, ECML, London GWML, Woodhead, etc.(double track with central express road)

~10in up: Royal Park housing development, removable tower blocks for transportation as they will reach well over a foot above baseboard level.

The third-rail and overhead line platforms will be joined by a removable footbridge, and stairways will connect ticket barriers to RP housing development and street below.

Not sure of the plan for the canal really, but I will most definitely be adding a narrowboat as they're just lovely, as well as wanting a challenge in building one from a kit(I believe Alphagraphix make narrowboat kits).

Royal Park will have both numbered and named blocks, ie; 2 Royal Park, Clifton Block, this being inspired by my school's naming of buildings after past pupils and notable members of staff, but also referring to them by numbers: Swift Buillding, 90s (The building being named after Jonathan Swift (!), but also being home to classrooms 90A,B and C and 91-98).

There will be cassettes either end of the layout on all three levels, with the fiddle yard boards being stepped as well so cassettes don't need to be held in the air as trains run onto them.

[Flying Snail]

Wow - there's a lot to it, and it will definitely keep you busy for a while. Trying to cater for so many different eras is a challenge not many of us are willing to take on - so it will be interesting to see how this goes.

When trying to get my head around what you're trying to do, my mind kept coming back to Jools Holland's layout which is a smorgasbord of different elements from different eras - each prototypical by itself, and meaningful to him in some different way. As a result he can create vignettes from different times and eras - you'll see Victorian steam, 60s diesel, Eurostar etc.

https://www.trains.com/mrr/how-to/model-train-layouts/jools-holland-and-his-railway-empire/

You're taking a different path, of course, and trying to create more coherent scenes but the ultimate aim - to create a space where you can run what you like and evoke multiple eras - appears rather similar to me.

Good luck with this project.

Edited May 9 by Flying Snail

[Flying Snail]

I forgot to say - they other thing that made me think of Jool's layout is that he has combined different locations too - London/UK and continental Europe!

[Mayner]

Nice juxtaposition of Park Royal area of London with its interesting mix of mainly Post WW1 housing and industry with the area framed to the North by the West Coast Main Line with its 25Kv traction system and Euston-Watford DC lines, the South GW Main Line/Heathrow Express and the North London Richmond line running in a North-East to South-West direction, the GW Ealing Broadway-Greenford line once worked by Bubble Cars to connect with the Piccadilly line to Rayners Lane and Uxbridge. Great mix of trains!

Spent my first year in London working on the North Western fringes of Park Royal close to the West Coast Main Line Stonebridge Park Carriage sidings, with BR/NSE 313 units and LT Tube Stock sharing the tracks of the decrepit Euston-Waterford line between Queens Park and Harrow. The North London they worked by ex-Southern Region 2 Car ex-compartment stock crossing above the West Coast Main Line and Watford DC lines at Willesden Junction. 

First day I took the tube from Ealing Broadway to Euston and the DC lines to Stone Bridge Park (3 changes of train)  where I was working not realising the two points were a couple of miles apart. Walked home that evening via Park Royal gricing Willesden Junction, Old Oak Common, the GW Birmingham and Main Lines along the way. Great fun living in London as a youngish person interested in trains, having a good time and having few responsibilities.

[LNERW1]

Great to hear all the support- main inspiration will be the area of Dublin near Connolly Station (As well as the Ballymun housing development and Ardoyne House in Ballsbridge, where I lived for seven years), Glasgow, central Birmingham and northeast London. The canals are also mainly inspired by Birmingham, although I did have a friend, who I visited often, who lived in a house adjacent to a canal, but I don't remember which one. I plan to have the ticket office/waiting room in arches underneath the platforms themselves, inspired by Birmingham Snow Hill. The trams are probably just going to be whatever I can find, as there isn't really any UK-outline model trams available anywhere, even in kit form(to my knowledge, anyway, I'm not a tram person), and the use of it as a street tramway is inspired by the Saint-Malo street tramways, which i visited when I went to France over Easter (Which @Metrovik said was "The most Abbeyleix thing ever").

Also, @Flying Snail, I would agree about the similarity to Jools Holland's layout in the urban scene, covering several different countries. Like that layout, I will very much try to make it a collection of vignettes, like a child on their first day of school (like myself, leaving their apartment building on a bike with a backpack), experiences I've had at several stations around the UK and Ireland, times I've spent walking along canals, taking the tram, even crossing the footbridge at Kidderminster station to get to a Severn Valley Railway gala. Everyone has their own special connection with the railway, and often some aspect of the landscape around it, and I'm trying to emphasise that here. Obviously, I don't have as many memories to put into this as some of the other forum members may, myself being younger than most of the trains I see the most often (071s, 22000s and MKIVs), but I still have a story to tell with this. Royal Park is going to be a much more personal layout than Ardree, if a little less operationally interesting, but then I'm happy just running trains in and out of the platforms all day. I do plan on making it possible to add loops behind the main board to make it a tailchaser, but that's a long way off. For now, I'm happy building a collection of memories set around a railway line and a block of flats.

There we go, poetic interlude over, time to go to bed.