by Cheeseminer
Oakenfen Halt is at the end of the northern extent of the Flatland Washes Railway. The line used to continue on to North Wash but that section of the line has sunk into the fen (for the third time) and current economics prevent its replacement, thus it is an unplanned terminus. It wouldn't exist at all if the site didn't also house one of the Company's wagon and carriage workshops, and if the Slightly Podgy Controller didn't live just round the corner. Most of the traffic relates to the workshop, but there is an occasional passenger service, for the occasional passenger, mainly residents of Oaken (population 17) and twitchers seeking a glimpse of the probably extinct Fenland Cold Duck (duckus coritzchillyere). |  |
Aims
Oakenfen Halt is one of those projects that's been mulling around for a extensive gestation period. I made the baseboard in early 2010 having sold off the OO layout. Just about to get around to putting something on the baseboard...The aim is twofold, perhaps three-or-four-fold. One is to have a place to 'go to town' on modelling detail without the exposure to the elements, the second is to have somewhere to put the stock inside the house; the potential third would be to have something to 'show' should the occasion arise.
A fourth aspect is to offer some kind of homage, in memoriam, to the Cambridge to St Ives railway line that someone decided to concrete over for a mere £180,000,000 (and counting) to make a transport system... The presence of the road is an excuse to model the faded glory of the Oakington level crossing gate. My imagination is that instead of the whole line getting closed (c/o Dr Beeching) the line now just ends here. (2006 photo copyright Rodney Burton who kindly provided a high res. version to model from).
The baseboard is approx 5ft6 by 3ft6. The current plan is simply a set of parallel tracks and a couple of buildings. I mused for a while (a year or so, it seems) with ideas like an inglenook layout but concluded that would defeat aim two plus any 'realism' I might like to suggest. Points take up a remarkable amount of space. A traverser was considered, but I know I'd never get the time to implement it. If any movement is ever required I envisage using a cassette system from the right-hand end: a sort of Traverser meets Hand of God.
First off - being a graphics software engineer (this week) - the task is to draft it out in a graphics tool. That's as far as I've got - but might actually lay some track later...
Oakington crossing photo Copyright Rodney Burton licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Oakington crossing photo Copyright Rodney Burton licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/