It Started at Toowoomba-a tale

For the last four or five years I've been lucky enough to attend the Toowoomba Model Railway Show. The show has been a source of great inspiration and friendship. I tend to use some of my time re-assessing what my modelling goals are. At most times of the year 'life' gets in the way of modelling plans, so I find it a positive to take the time and get some plans in writing.

In 2006 I used some of my time doodling an idea of my own show layout. Of course there were plenty of others to bounce ideas off, so it made the job all the more enjoyable. The plan about here is the first version, the main idea being a layout with simple trackplan, and small size. I love the look of many of the On30 layouts, for me it's the landscaping that is the strongest focus of these layouts. So with this in mind I made the plan with a focus on landscape and trackwork. Lots of trees and cuttings and green stuff.

I have mentioned elsewhere that I hand lay my trackwork, and so this layout would be the same. This plan does have it's drawbacks as I need to build the trackwork to be as reliable as possible and of course robust to enable it to be transported around. The track will also be DCC, so that the simple trackwork benifits by moving more than one loco in an area at a time, without alot of blocks and switches.

The rollingstock will be steam era, witha bit of pre 1950 stuff about. I think that the time period is probably still broad at this stage say 1940-1970, this may change as I move forward, we'll see. This means that early diesels may also make an appearance.

I went over the layout plan, more formally this time and realised that the track plan would not work in the space I've allowed. The decision then changed the size of the modules, and adjust the plan. It is now more definitely designed to be operated from two sides, enabling variation for the operators as well as being something a bit different. The actual trackwork is very close to this design, and the wheat sheds are gone, replaced bya larger livestock loading area. Each module is now 600mm deep not 400, it works better giving larger radius curves.

This'll be enough for today, unfortunately my typing is still rubbish!