|
Eskmuir - 4mm/00 Finescale (Tony Bucknell, Rochdale)
The thoughts of a model railway based on Brechin in Scotland were born after visiting the railway in 2001 whilst on a railtour to Aberdeen.
As Eskmuir is only a representation and not actually “Brechin”, I have based the layout to be from 1958 to 1964 with the line from Forfar via Careston
still open and the area still buoyant with freight. I have also assumed the USAF base at Edzell remained open as a major facility. We have taken some
licence with the routes / lines to give better operating potential with in particular, the line from Forfar approaching from the Bridge of Dun/Aberdeen
direction rather than from Edzell.
The Beeching led rundown of the railways has been ignored and we will continue to run passenger trains and high levels of freight / parcels as found in
the Dundee, Forfar, Aberdeen triangle.
To provide good public entertainment and always have something moving, the Station is split into 3 separate operating sections. Section 1 covers platform
1 and is fitted with an automatic shuttle which controls a DMU running to and from Edzell. Section 2 covers platforms 2 and 3 receives trains from Bridge
of Dun / Montrose / Forfar / Aberdeen etc using the passenger loop line. Section 3 covers the goods yard and is fed directly from the Bridge of Dun direction.
This means that we have two separate, parallel lines in from the fiddle yard which replicates the method of operation at Brechin.
I built the baseboards using plywood and have laid track in OO finescale using handbuilt pointwork. Each section is wired separately back to a master control
panel although we have the flexibility to control all sections individually or together if required. To allow us to test the operation.
Mainly ready to run models from the likes of Hornby and Bachmann are used but we modify these to represent local Scottish based engines. There are a few gaps
in the range of models covering Scotland so I am presently kit building a Caley 439 0-4-4 tank and a NB J37 0-6-0.
|
|
