Beginnings

To call this a beginning seems like a lie, since the beginning of this project was a few years ago at least. But it is still a beginning. I think any hobby project, or really any worthwhile project, has a series of false beginnings and dead-ends before the project truly takes off.

Whether this is because of nerves, commitment issues, timing, or any number of other factors is debatable. But projects never have one starting point. They are birthed many times before their true life begins.

The Project

Now that the philosophy is out of the way, what is this actual project?

Simple, it is the building of a smallish diorama depicting a Victorian Narrow Gauge Terminus sometime between the 1940s and 50s. Although an alt-history one where the railways didn’t fall into neglect. I don’t want to model despair.

While it is not a real world location being depicted, I have a theory that it is located somewhere around Powelltown, in some kind of scenario where a Narrow Gauge line was extended from the Yarra Valley. But the model itself will take inspiration from the various real narrow gauge lines of Victoria, most notably, of course, Puffing Billy.

The depiction of a real location would be too limiting, but I still feel that a specific, or even broad, location is necessary to at least have in mind before truly starting. Even if it’s just to get the terrain and flora right.

The diorama is On30 scale, and will be around 2M x 65cm.

The story so far

So far I have a basic layout of track in mind, a loco to run, various pieces of rollingstock and a couple of buildings and other scenery. That is, I have the bare minimum I need to start actually building.

Up until this point I have been happy just being able to move things around, without any commitment to a final idea. But the time has come to finalise the plans, otherwise nothing will ever change, and I’ll be stuck with a layout that exists only in my mind and a locomotive running out of place for eternity.

But before any actual building can take place, the first step will be the construction of the baseboard.

And that will be the story for the next post.