Around 10 years ago, we moved house and the existing P4 layout was installed in the room earmarked as its new home. Glenlivet did not run well, although many lessons for a future P4 layout were learned in its construction, and the move highlighted a number of issues that would have to be addressed if any future layout was to be portable.
I drew up plans for 'the layout', a 1960s BR(Sc) layout of a former Highland Railway cross country branch terminating on a pier, but felt that something small and quick to build would be pleasant in the meantime, hence my abortive 9 year flirtation with both N gauge and 2mm fine scale (so much for quick!).
During that time, by interests changed, in particular a visit to the Ffestiniog Railway's Hunslet Hundred gala in 1993 lead to the rekindling old interests in British narrow gauge railways that had been the target of my pre-university modelling. In the intervening years, regular visits to Porthmadog have led to the FR and WHR becoming the main area of interest with a keen interest in the WHR reconstruction project. Eventually I settled on 4mm scale on 9mm track (I nearly went down the route of 8mm gauge, but as P4 is likely to resurface somewhere in the model railway room, life isn't long enough to for two silly gauges!)
Around 6 months of doodling produced several workable detailed plans, one of which (I know which one, but I'm not telling...) will probably emerge given time (for the record: Duffws, Tanybwlch, Harbour Station, Portmadoc New (Old), Beddgelert, A cross between Waunfawr and Bettws Garmon, and off at a tangent, Lynton), but I felt that something smaller and not directly based on a prototype, but still FR/WHR inspired, was a better starting point.
Eventually I remembered an article by Iain Rice that I had saved, and so out came the pencil and paper.
Iain Rice's article was in the erstwhile Modelling Railways Illustrated, April 1995 issue and was for a 7 foot long 7mm scale narrow gauge diorama style layout. The drawings from the magazine are reproduced below:
(Drawing by Iain Rice, Modelling Railways Illustrated, April 1995)
The concept is that the Croesor Tramway was upgraded in 1922 to the foot of the Parc inclines, and a passenger service was provided. To the right is Croesor Junction and the WHR, to the left is the line to the quarries, worked by quarry locomotives. The buildings are typical Welsh Highland corrugated iron, with the exception of the engine shed which Iain intended to be used by the quarry locomotives and be of an earlier date. The inspiration for the loco shed was the Festiniog shed at Dinas, although I suspect Iain had not seen all the available photographs of that building, which was a two storey structure adjoining the station. As yet I am uncertain as to what will materialise at this spot on the layout. Something significant is required to act as a scenic break.
I have stretched the layout a little, adding 1 foot into it, making my 4mm version 5 feet long. This has allowed me to lengthen the loop to take a 'standard' Welsh Highland passenger train of 3 bogie carriages clear of the crossing. Additionally, the layout is a little deeper, allowing me to use a tight radius to return quarry trains behind the scenery to the fiddle yard on the right. this will allow loaded and empty slate trains to appear and disappear at the correct points on the layout.
The layout is well under construction, but the web site is lagging a little behind, some photographs of the construction shortly...
