The Miniature-Industrial Complex…

Some modellers are focussed and directional. I could be better described as meandering and listless! Imagine a bumper car, attempting to circumnavigate its corral of chaos, but spending more time heading in the wrong direction than the right one (presumably to the chagrin of the screaming attendant - in this analogy, they could represent my wallet!)

The first entry on this blog concerned the village store for Butley Creek, what was supposed to be my first (and likely only) venture into EM gauge. However, as discussed in that piece, “The Creek” remains a pretty vaguely defined, ethereal concept. With a growing roster of EM-converted wagons (predominantly kit-built), a few Rustons, and my prized RT Models Sentinel, I felt I really ought to build something to test them on.

Enter that baseboard I had dumped in the corner, originally intended for an N gauge micro, and I began to form some dangerous ideas. I felt an irrational yearning to model some really bland, unremarkable, and downright ugly industrial buildings, and this little box felt like the perfect canvas within which they could dwarf a grotty shunter.

And so, I set out into the unknown, with no real plan beyond a few disparate photos of structures. The layout is really as basic as it gets - no pointwork, just two roads connected by a sector plate. As with James’ Paxton Road, it is pure tactile operation. Sliding magnets give hands-off uncoupling, whilst the distinctly hands-on sector plate provides a less fiddly use for those surplus digits. I am not an “operator”, indeed Rye Sands barely runs outside of shows, but I do find that the simplicity makes this feel approachable, and begs you to shunt a few wagons, even if only for a minute. 

The buildings were really made up on-the-hoof. They are bigger than anything I have scratch-built before, for which I compensated by building in some pretty chunky balsa “skeletons” - they look more like remote control aircraft than buildings on the inside!

I won’t go into the method. I think it is all pretty self-explanatory. The right hand of the layout remains a sticking point - I’m struggling to come up with a building that feels right, whilst also balancing out the tall structures at the opposite end. However, there is something reassuring in the fact that there is no plan. After all, this is just a test plank - if it ends up finished, it’d be a bonus. 

It’s another of James’ layouts that is now drifting into frame. Night Shift tapped into my own long-held desire to model a night scene, once realised by hiding grain-of-wheat bulbs in Metcalfe buildings, and drawing the curtains in the railway room. I’m not committed to the idea yet - after all, the last thing I need is to put off Butley Creek even further by building interiors for all the buildings!