Saturday 30 May 2020

Maps and imagineering

Here is an example of excellent imagineering and a map used to great effect. It is by P.D.Hancock who is possibly to model railways what Featherstone is to wargaming. He created a fantastic layout and based it in an extension of South East Scotland-
 His book is a classic, relatively easily available and a terrific read. It is charming,inspiring and well worth a read,just perfect for times such as these...

Yesterday saw no progress in painting or modelling but some reading or plan was done. I read up about the practicality involved in making an outdoor railway and the rules of dba v3 which is a version new to me. As the zoom games are to be regular in the current situation I need to get a better handle on the updates. Reading wrg prose is not the easiest thing to do especially on a very warm day!

Here is a passenger’s or trains eye view of where the line will run. I like the almost overgrown feel to it. In my mind the railway is a liminal space between countryside and coast, town and country or even the everyday and faerie! 


19 comments:

  1. Lovely view of the proposed train line!

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    1. Garden is looking good and to be enhanced by a train I think.

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  2. Interesting, have you shifted from wall to ground as in your original drawings you seemed to be running along the narrow top of the wall as an Alpine railway?

    I hope you now adopt the grown up Railway tradition of writing each Railway article with your name in initials.

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    1. The plan has evolved to ground level to facilitate scenery and avoid expensive derailments.
      A M Gruber

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  3. Hi Alan. Certainly one of my all time favorite modelers is P.D.Hancock- right from the 1970s his 'Craig and Mertonford' OO9 Railway captured my imagination- with 'Craig Harbor'...a very clever man. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. A great modeller indeed and one who also had a garden railway when he moved I think to a bungalow.

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  4. Have they got planning permission ? - we don't want the same fiasco as HS2

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    1. My daughters have given their permission, is that the same thing?

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  5. Good read and go for a line in the wilderness look. Read c and m in 1970’s was HO/OO9 fan. Built one layout and then collection mothballed for decades. Expensive liliput locos destroyed by offspring 🤪 years later when I let them be used as toys to play with!!!!! Not so my soldiers which are always under lock and key.......

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  6. Good read and go for a line in the wilderness look. Read c and m in 1970’s was HO/OO9 fan. Built one layout and then collection mothballed for decades. Expensive liliput locos destroyed by offspring 🤪 years later when I let them be used as toys to play with!!!!! Not so my soldiers which are always under lock and key.......

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    1. Maybe now is the time for another go at 009?

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    2. Best of both worlds? I am a Wargamer at heart but on the side I am trying to build a garden railway for my wife.........

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  7. I loved the HS2 comment. Hopefully you will have no trouble from archaeology in an inconvenient place, from awkward landowners or the Navvies themselves https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/24/the-railway-raid-in-the-spectator-23-november-1844/

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    1. Having been the navvy so far and perhaps an archaeologist ( found a dirty one pence piece) and the landowner too my behaviour has been impeccable.

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  8. One of my neighbours once made model railway engines, carriages etc as his profession. He has some lovely toys (indoors).

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    1. What an interesting neighbour, are you tempted?

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    2. Always loved model railways. Something else I've not got round to doing anything about! I think that many wargamers are tempted by them from time to time.

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  9. Looks like Hancock is the Charles Grant of railway modelling. The sort of book I daren’t read for fear of getting sucked into a new hobby.

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    1. Dooooooonnnnnnttttt do it we wargamers are outnumbered already as it!

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