The station track diagrams

The diagrams were scanned from the two volumes of An Historical Survey Of Selected Great Western Stations. The terminus was selected simply by its general attractiveness and overall facilities, passenger station, goods shed and sidings, engine shed, turntable. They appear to offer interesting operation. To print it at the correct size was a simple matter of scanning into PhotoShop and resizing as follows. The plans are at a scale of 120ft to 1 inch so by simple measurement you get that the overall size is 11" therefore the real world size is 1320ft which at our scale is 2640mm. The layout drawing is one fifth full size so the scan should be resized to 528mm. However I want the station to fit within one half of the overall layout so I made it 400mm i.e. 2m. I then checked the platform length, 150mm i.e. 750mm which is long enough for 5 coaches and a tender loco. I also checked the track centres which are 5mm i.e. 25mm which is what's required. So this all looks good and the print was pasted into place.

I had previously drawn the two 180° turns and linked them with the back straight. Newquay was positioned and the connecting line added to take the track to Turn 1

Bourton-on-the-Water was selected by a similar set of criteria as above but additionally it needed to be from a single track environment and be compact in its depth. I didn't want any overlap between the stations so I positioned the two tunnel mouths on the back straight and using the method outlined above resized Bourton-on-the-Water to fit the space, again checking platform length and track centres. This time the platforms are 100mm i.e. 500mm long which will handle four coaches with the loco beyond the platform. Again perfectly acceptable.

Construction Plan

Because of the level changes I intend to build the fiddle yard first, then Fornham St. Jude and install them along with the hidden track work up to and including Turn 1. At This point I will have a useable, albeit non-scenic layout. I can then build Corkerton which is a considerably larger job and install it and the connection to Turn 1. The final phase will be all the scenic work, buildings, and all the myriad things which make a model railway

I have no idea how long this will but who cares?! The fun is in the construction every bit as much as it is in the operation.