The Part of Model Railroading I Rarely Show - Planning an N Scale Layout Scene

This is West Harbor. I asked a group of people how they want to see me build things and their answers made me realize that I don't show enough about why I'm building something before I actually build it. So let's take a look into what's going on in my head right now before I start working on West Harbor. This is the part of the layout that I'm calling West Harbor. This small area here represents the steward yard and this area here represent the passenger tracks that runs parallel to the CN mainline. And what I want to do with this sort of passenger freight valley is I want to make it feel forgotten. No one pays attention to the comings and goings of this fishbowl. I want to make it dreary. I want it to be liminal and I want it to be set in late October. And so one of the challenges is trying to figure out the relationship not only between station and the but also the placement of things like these bridges because what I want to do is use the bridges to create a vignette, a diorama, so that when you encounter the railroad these bridges tell you where to look. And the space between the two bridges I want to do a lot of storytelling. So in reality the West Harbor station in Hamilton is a very modern building and so I wanted to recreate the feel of a modern station. And at first I thought maybe I could scratch build something. But I'm not interested in a faithful reproduction of the actual station. The station isn't sentimental. It doesn't hold particular value to me. It just happens to be a modern building in an old town. And so for me all the time and effort it would take to kick-bash or scratch build a custom station for the space wasn't worth it. So I found this kit. The kit is manufactured by Kibri. Its part number is 37400. The station is modeled after a German prototype but I think that its design captures the essence of the West Harbor station and it's perfectly sized. It can fit in this oddly shaped space here perfectly. So in this case the station is West Harbor-y enough and it suits me because it's good enough and it's the right tool for the job. So the station building, being represented by a fallen apartment building, offers up the purpose for why there are passenger tracks here. But what I don't like about it is that it doesn't create enough of a story in this yard area. And the thing that bugs me is that retaining wall because it's boring and I want to do something with it that is interesting. Okay so let's pause there and let's talk about another project I've been thinking about. I love kit bashing and I particularly like kit bashing outland scale model kits. They are inexpensive. They have really basic architecture and I like the challenge of converting them from pretty simple structures into bespoke structures. And months ago I was taking a look at this basic apartment kit and I wondered if I could turn it into a station. But this was a project that didn't have a reasonable home on the layout. I already have three stations. I don't need a fourth one. That said I spend a lot of time catching the train from Aldershot station and they have an abandoned CN platform. So as I think about the Aldershot station I realize that it is a combination of old station plus freight track plus a new station and it strikes me that that's something that I could do with this area. Let's imagine that the passenger station was originally along that back wall. So now I have the potential for a focal point beyond the yard which is an old passenger station and like a lot of railroads we've modernized and so now we have the new station in the foreground. So I like the story that this is starting to suggest. You have the old station in the background maybe we'll make it completely abandoned. We board it up it's covered in graffiti and in fact maybe there's freight or maybe there's old goods and freight left on the passenger platforms. Maybe choose for the crew maybe it's burned out something but the point is that is what is old this is what is new. And now what the two bridges do is they frame it and so you can see here this is a full scene. So when you enter into the space the two bridges tell you where your eye is supposed to look. You've got the station tracks and the freight tracks down on the bottom and then this is going to let me build a city that rises up beyond it. And so you've got the foreground framed and then the background supports it. And speaking of bridges I wouldn't be thinking about new station old station and creating this area here if it weren't for the fact that I had done these bridges as a test project. This is my new Bathurst bridge. I just completed this last month and I built these pair of bridges as a proof of concept for a construction technique that I wanted to use over here. So I started with the plain bridges and I finished off with this bridge which I'm very happy with. Which means I'm now going to take what I've learned building this bridge and apply it to these two bridges. And much like the two bridges that I have here at West Harbour are meant to frame a scene this bridge and this bridge help to create this scene over here. And so the Bathurst bridge all the way down to the city create a single yard scene here. The Bathurst bridge and one of the bridges at West Harbour help create this area. And then finally the two bridges at West Harbour help to create this area here. And so in summary this is West Harbour. West Harbour was always designed to be a station and a freight area. I wanted the area to be a standalone scene but I didn't know how to do that. I needed a bridge on another part of the layout and so I built these two bridges as a test. Once I had those two bridges I realized that they help frame an area that would become a focal point. I wanted to model a modern station in the foreground but I didn't want to bother scratch building one. And so I found a kit that would be a decent stand-in. But I'm not necessarily happy with a modern station being in the foreground and then this sort of empty area in the middle before we get to a future city. I had a project where I wanted to kitbash some pretty simple structures into a station but didn't have a place for a station. But then thinking about the abandoned passenger platforms at the Aldershot station and considering this space it made sense that I could add an abandoned station in the mid-ground, have the new station in the foreground and the city in the background. Which means that I now have a five foot wide three foot deep scene that tells a pretty complex story. And so I realized that I spend a lot of time trying to share how I built something but I don't spend very much time ever talking about why I built something. So hopefully this process will give you an insight into how I have arrived at the decisions that I'm talking about today. And as I start working on all these separate projects and ultimately sharing how I built them you'll be able to understand why I built them. I'm excited about this. It's going to be dark. It's going to be grungy. You're going to see passenger trains screaming through trying to get away from whatever this is and freight trains slowly humming back and forth. We're going to see the past. We're going to see the future. This is ambitious and it's going to be fun.