Hand-laid model railway track

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to allocate time to my model railway hobby, but I keep coming away feeling unfulfilled. I think it’s because I’m reading a direction to aim for out of all of my previous experience but beyond that initial push I’m essentially rudderless and drifting.

My experience with track laying in S7 and in EM has shown me that I quite enjoy the entire process and particularly the end results, and my experience with building the Connoisseur Models starter kit has shown me that brass kit construction isn’t all that hard either.

Having recently signed up to the EM Gauge Society I’ve also come to read that valve gear can be transplanted from one wheelset to another without undue stress (my experience rewheeling a jinty was alot more brute force-based when it came to factory-fitted coupling rods).

This means that steam is no longer completely out of the picture for any future designs. I think it would make sense to cut my teeth on a pre-BR design with inside valve gear to ensure that I can actually do it all properly, but I can’t see any major hurdles to re-gauging a Standard 4MT (my holy grail) with some practise.

So, my givens at this point are:

  • Functional at no more than 11′, extension for increase operational ability permitted (i.e. double ended fiddle)
  • No more than 18″ wide
  • EM Gauge, hand laid track that’s not too complex but authentic

    Design-wise and aesthetically I have a few points in mind too:

  • No belpaire fireboxes on non-tank locos (firm)
  • Mainly-inside valve gear steam locomotives
  • Not bucolic in layout design
  • London, Manchester or Edinburgh based

    Yet more decisions.

    Advertisement