Hang on a moment Dunks; incoming.
Here we go with my effort.
The perceptive amongst us may recognise that my entry is the layout I?m building. There are several reasons why I?ve chosen to take this path rather than one of my pipe dreams that?ll never be realised. As a concept it?s more fully worked through, it has had to be to progress this far. I?m also aware that the act of putting pen to paper and specifying buildings or trees is easy, tackling a cityscape in card and plastic or a wood with twisted wire far less so. I?m aware that what I?ve sketched out will have to be built, and because I?m a selfish old bugger, will have to be built solo. So to the plan.
Lucky chap that I am, I have a 20?x20? playroom to fill with the toys of my choosing. The first Morfa concept used most of that space. Pwllheli and Machynlleth were to be fiddle yards, though I was going to tart them up with simple, representative scenery. At this stage of the design they would have had a loop to run the loco round the train and a fan of sidings for storage. I had worked out in my mind how I could dress them to give an impression of the destination they represented.
I had started to build some of this when reality hit. I made a mistake when building the first chunk of the baseboard. Though I?d marked out where the loft ladder touched ground and allowed for the angle it reposed at, I?d not allowed enough. The dark l shaped shadow on the sketch of the room shows this first phase of baseboard construction in its original position. At this stage I could have moved the boards back a touch towards the left hand wall on the room plan, but this would have created a pinch point at the door I didn?t want to live with. The other problem was that whenever the loft trap was opened a shower of bat poo fell from the opening. Not too bad on bare boards but I didn?t fancy removing accumulations of guano from trees and bushes of the finished layout, so I moved the already constructed section through 90 degrees clockwise to the position it now occupies. Also shown on the plan are my workbench at the bottom right next to the right hand window and the spare sofa positioned to give a view out of the other. These views are a non negotiable must have and led to the kidney shaped footprint. Let?s take a look at the detailed plan.
Starting at the thin non scenic bridging section towards the bottom and heading clockwise the line bursts out of the short tunnel at Barmouth, curves along the foot of the cliff, crosses a short bridge over the old lifeboat slipway and in the company of the footpath, heads past the toll cottage and out onto the timber trestle over the Mawddach estuary. This bridge at best represents the real Barmouth bridge as it will be curved, far shorter at three feet long and will not have the steel swing section at the Barmouth end. It?s a compromise, it?ll have all the airs of a typical Cambrian bridge, and if photos are taken carefully the eye might just be deceived into thinking it?s the real deal, but if viewed as a whole the subterfuge will become dreadfully apparent. Moving on from the bridge the line passes sand flats, marsh and dune to arrive at Morfa itself. I hope that Morfa will be recognisable as Morfa Mawddach in the period after demolition of most of the old station and its rebuilding as a new halt. Again I couldn?t resist messing about with reality, dubious things have happened to time and space. I?m not going to go into any detail at all about the time anomalies, but I will tell you that the Dolgellau ? Tywyn leg of the triangle has lasted longer than the Dolgellau ? Barmouth one, supposedly to serve quarries down the line; this is the bit that branches to go behind the backscene. Continuing along the line heads out of Morfa then suddenly finds itself along the Dyfi estuary in the vicinity of Abertafol. Curving over a masonry embankment a short bridge spans the tideway into the basin where several small boats in artful decay will be moored before heading into a tunnel through a rocky outcrop and onto the bridging section.
I?m not one of those people who can follow a plan down to its last detail, fairly obvious considering the above upheavals so some aspects remain sketchy. I get bored if I know exactly how something will turn out. Two of the latest notions are that the branch will lead on from behind the backscene onto the top wall of my playroom, curve across the door on a bridging section and terminate on top of the bookcases on the left hand side. I think that this branch will be undergoing dismantling as mentioned in the layout thread.
It?s also occurred to me that some form of hidden sidings would be good. These days I like the American notion of staging where trains are loaded ready for deployment, but that deployment is for a single journey rather than repeated trips. I?m exploring my options at the moment.
Something that?s also on my mind is the time of year things are set in. I fancy moving from the dying days of high summer (Abertafol) through Autumn (Morfa) to one of those sharp blue sky winter days (the branch), watch the Morfa thread and see what happens.
I think it slipped under the radar 
