Recently I visited the York model railway exhibition, it’s usually a good one and one or two layouts really catch my eye. This year I was immediately taken back to early days of the blog and those Yahoo groups before forums and Facebook took off. Above is an overview of the bare Albion Yard baseboards, which had developed out of a desire to build an Iain Rice plan, ‘Cornfield Street’. As such the track plan is immediately familiar to me when I see it.

Well at York I was immediately taken back to reading MORRIL, Iain’s article and plan and my attempt to get the plan working. This was because I was standing in front of Swan Street Goods (above), an EM rendition of the plan that is an almost exact replication of Iain’s concept.

With best intentions I’d started the same way to replicate Iain’s plan as far as possible with Peco Code 75 track, the 3-way point that had recently been introduced being the fire starter to get the project going.

I’d kept as close as possible to the plan, but this is where using ready to lay track can be a disadvantage. Whilst I was able to replicate the plan, the ‘flow’ wasn’t there as the points whilst excellent quality have the restrictions of them being either left or right handed. I’d also used 9mm MDF for the track bed. That’s not a problem as such, it forms the track base for all my layouts so far. The issue was the thickness, and while I wanted to keep to Iain’s plan with two layers, the depth and point motor position wouldn’t allow that.

I’d also mirrored the plan, and that too had lost something in translation, I’d done that to accommodate it in its home of the time. The depth of the constructed boards and the track base thickness precluded me from having the lower level in place, so the overall impact of the original design was lost early on. This was particularly apparent in the section above, for me there was literally no clearance for the road vehicles that worked, so that went too! Ultimately I had something that wasn’t really like what it was supposed to be or I’d hoped it to be! There was one side benefit though, with this transformation I was no longer constrained by the original project concept, hence Albion Yard became a photo set, with different buildings and careful management of sightlines, I was able to disguise its origin and the fact that it had a pretty small footprint, the scenic section only being 8ft x 2ft.

Above, is another return to try and scratch that urban itch. True to form though, it’s nothing like the original concept…..