fishy

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION, INFORMATION and DETAILS

I have made several “British Modern Image” layouts and parts of layouts for others so to do my own gave me the feeling that I have done this before so why on earth do it again! So I decided to move on from “British Modern Image” “0” scale because it was time for something completely different. For some time now I have wanted to model away from rolling stock. I decided on American Gauge 1 because the quality of the rolling stock, is such, that it is excellent straight from the box, which left me time to make the surroundings. I have tried to make something that has not been done before in Gauge 1. The model is modern but uses old structures surviving and being utilised today. I purchased 4 H0 kits from the USA and enlarged the drawings 300%, 1/87 to 1/29 this gave me scale working drawings which makes construction a whole lot easier. The diorama consists of five sections, Wharf - Dry Dock (boat repair) - Shipwreck - Forest - Ice House and Loading area. There is a sixth section beyond the loading area which has a lumber yard. At home the Wharf, dry dock and shipwreck sections are connected to the others by a garden section. The Wharf section is the only one that does not have a Styrofoam base. It is two sheets of 4mm ply in a sandwich configuration. The Wharf is entirely scratch built (I’ve always wanted to build a wharf) with over 3000 pieces of stained wood. The buildings are all scratch built, representing the offices, fish holding tanks (with water) and packing loading building. The water supply tank is on the next section connected by piping. All the boats were purchased more or less as seen. I looked at boat kits but there wasn’t time. The shipwreck was used in a film (The monster of the deep) filmed in the Channel Islands.

The forest is really a place to put stock on/off the track unseen. The “Ice House” maybe needs some explanation. Before electric refrigeration, “Reefers”, refrigerated boxcars were loaded with ice from the ice platform the ice being stored in the tall ice house. It is now being used as a supply depot. The track has no power, all stock being radio controlled and construction took around 6 months of “spare time”!