E L W O O
D E A S T
Modelling only
half a station
Elwood
East is an inner city station set in the 1970s blue diesel period. The
design is a little unusual because although there is a station platform
no passenger services will be modelled - essentially it represents a
station left over from the steam era where the platform is now used for
parcels traffic, and the former goods yard has become a small
engineer's yard with the odd freight train being stored here too.
The
design is a terminus-to-fiddleyard plank layout at around 6 feet long,
and this shows the (ficticious) plan for the entire station with the
part being modelled outlined in red.
I'm
never interested in creating a huge back story for my layouts, so the
simple idea here is that this was once a station that handled 4 or 5
coach trains, but by the 1970s all the passenger services are provided
by DMUs which terminate on the other side of the bridge and simply run
out again so we never see them. It's a former steam-served inner city
secondary line that is now just about hanging on thanks to its small,
commuter-fed DMU passenger service, its use as a storage facility for
engineers trains, and the parcels traffic which serves a Royal Mail
regional distribution depot nearby (okay, I'll admit to a couple of
realism problems here - the goods yard I think would have been more
likely to be cited on the lower side of the plan where the runround
loop is, and I've yet to work out how all these parcels get up the
stairs to the road. Perhaps calling them former carriage sidings would
work better, but I'm still stumped on how the parcels get off the
platform).
Scenery
is actually pretty minimal - platform, road overbridge, retaining wall,
grassy embankment and probably a row of houses at the top of the
embankment. No station building as it and the steps up/down to
the
overbridge are on the unmodelled side of the platform, and no signal
box either as this too is on the unmodelled part of the plan.
My layout sketches aren't exactly masterpieces, but hopefully they get
the general ideas across.
The
usual suspects will be employed - 5mm plywood baseboards with softboard
battening, Peco Code 55 track, and Electrofrog points operated by rods
under the baseboard. Motive power will be provided by the
Farish 04 and
Class 47 models, with a selection of short parcel, mineral, oil and
engineer's trains.
Construction
was due to take place in the summer
of 2009 after 'Bychan' was finished, but I suspect it will be nearer
Autumn/Winter now.
