The story so far: I bought a load of Fleishmann Profitrack second hand - actually third hand as I later found out! - from a modeller living way down south near Cartagena, i.e. the other end of Spain from me up here in the Pyrenees near Andorra. This track is great with the wonderful advantage of having the ballast built-in saving a tedious job that I'm not looking forward to one little bit!
So having devised my layout's design, bought some more points on eBay - Profitrack is now obsolete and difficult and expensive to find! - I made the baseboard, scratchbuilt a turntable for the fiddle yard at my home and installed the lot in its permanent home, a 'trastero' or underground store room in a block of flats down in town - 12 kms away down a twisting mountain road! Issue Nº 1, location, location location ...
Out of sight out of mind as they say, I also have two large, high energy dogs to attend to as well as a life in retirement to lead with my very forbearing lady
So, Issue Nº 2 ...Issue Nº 3 was a serious one-off blow, however, as having laid the track and tested each electrical section with a small engine one fine day I simply began playing trains with all eleven of them - Hatton's is very addictive and in fact their 'Trunk' service is essential for me as the overhead in delivery charges is huge unless I spend more than £300! They've also had them several VAT registered here as in there EU countries so no customs hassle, which are very severe issue!!! It was then I discovered a death knell for my Mk 1 layout - less than half of my engines would run over the curved points, of which I'd got three in the original batch and bought three more on eBay, which were essential to the design ...
So, back to the drawing board and on with the thinking caps. As luck would have it as in the meantime I got lucky buying a large batch of wagons from a bereaved lady also down south who more or less threw in six Peco medium points and a diamond crossing, unused and still in their packaging that I thought I might as well have for some time in the future. I'd already bought a few Peco short points and some Flexitrack for the fiddle yard and learned the knack of uniting the two types of track - Fleishmann's plain fishplates are the key!
That diamond crossing changed everything, allowing me to spread they layout with a set of siding back alongside the mainline and helping me to give the layout an impression of wide open space so common in British branch line terminus stations. So for now just a few pictures to show you the idea - BTW the terminus measures 240 x 60 cms and the fiddle yard 22 x 50 and is integral with a shelving system:
But meanwhile why Porlock? Well layout Mk 1 was to be at Montgomery, a fictitious extension of the Bishop's Castle Railway to join the Cambrian line between Welshpool and Newtown as well as linking north to the Minsterley branch¡h off of the LNWR/GWR Shrewsbury to Welshpool line. I used to live in the areas as a kid and used to park my bike at a disuded station on the Minsterley line before catching the school bus to Shrewsbury so as well as following my preferred M.O., namely a fictitious railway at a real location, it also served as an exercise in nostalgia as I left the area in 1975 never to return ...
But why Porlock I hear you cry? Hatton's again I'm afraid. Having started collecting engines and stock to suit the Ex-GWR/LMS theme, based in 1957, an important year for me due to reason you may have already guessed, I came across the ex-LSWR Drummond engines that I dearly love, plus an 'N' Class mogul, plus a Beattie 2-4-0 well tank ... So somewhere in the west country it had to be, an area I've never visited. A lot of fun researching on-line and elsewhere gave me the rationale for my layout- Porlock was in the original plan for what came to be the West Somerset Line. So that's the bait of this station, ex-GWR. But I also liked the idea of extending the Exe Valley Line right up to the Moor beyond Dulverton, and making it ex-LSWR to boot
But what about the Beattie engine? And why would the LSWR extend the Exe valley? Simply lit and lay the Wadebridge Railway a bit further east and you have another 'Withered Arm' scenario. Then I began researching the West Somerset some more and found that there was indeed another railway up there, the West Somerset Mineral railway, which ran north form the Bredon Hills, way up on the Moor, to the harbour at Watchet where its iron ore was loaded for the foundries at Newport. So far so OK, but the WSMR had a huge incline to surmount - it's a National Monument now! - so if I were the engineer designing the line I would have taken it to Porlock Wier harbour, duly extended, off setting the extra distance - it already covered half of that with the upper part of the railway reaching as far as Wheddon Cross which is way west of Bredon Hills - by having gentle gradients throughout.So my little layout serves three different lines
