Porth Byhan

The Model

I had some thick foam board and some spare track, so started playing around with the concept of a couple of siding s on a quayside. Following the ideas from Mevagissy, I devised a simple plan, complete with buildings, that would give me a representation of a Cornish harbour, plus the chance to experiment with different modelling techniques.

I also decided to post progress of the layout on RMweb – a decision I’ve not regretted as the help and encouragement I received was invaluable.

The imaginary history for the harbour had the two quays built at different times. To represent this, I used different styles of paving and stone walls. The first building I attempted was the Custom House. However, as the ground level of the harbour was halfway up the height of the box, I realised I couldn’t complete the full heigh and still shut the box lid – shutting the lid was my self-imposed restriction of the concept of the box file layout. So, I had to devise a way to fix the upper parts to the lower parts and disguise the join.

The solution was coffee stirrers. I’d used thin foam board to form the basis of the low relief buildings. Sticking short vertical lengths of the wooden stirrer between the foam board and the box side left a thin slot. I then used longer lengths of stirrer on the foam board for the upper parts of the buildings – these slid into the slots and kept the upper parts in place.

Once I’d proved this idea, the layout came on in leaps and bounds. The Custom House used large, formal window and door frames, and the cottage next door was made to look as contrasting as possible. I also wanted to create the half-wall, half-roof style windows so typical of the area. Both these buildings were fairly easy to split horizontally, and I turned my attention to the pub.

One of the best-known pubs in Cornwall is the Sloop Inn in St Ives. I took several photos, luckily without the usual throngs of holiday makers outside so was able to make a reasonable representation. In hindsight, the building is probably too small, but it sits in the corner nicely without imposing too much and gives a sense of perspective. The roof for the Lugger was left as a separate piece, the joins hidden under the eaves.

The last building at the back is the boat repair shed. This too caused me a few scratches of the head – how could I disguise the horizontal split halfway up the doors? The solution was to make the whole of the doors removeable, leaving the prototypical gap at the bottom as the join. 

With two exits to the fiddle yard, I was stuck with which sort of building to disguise them. The area between the tracks was much too small to put any sort of building (I did try), so after much online discussion I created an old coaching inn converted to a fish market. This was based on another famous Cornish building, the Keigwin Arms in Mousehole, but extended with an arched passage. This proved to be the most difficult building to model as the two lower parts had be positioned carefully to match up with the top part.

Each siding track was two lengths of rail, stripped from the sleepers and glued in place. Pairs of door-catch magnets were placed between the rails, to enable uncoupling using the ’Brian Kirby Uncoupler’ idea I’d seen on RMweb.

Embossed plastic card was used for the quay paving and track infill.

Operation

Once the buildings were in, the problem of how to make a lighting gantry was tackled. I knew I’d need to see into the scenic section and that the painted backscene would be quite high as it used the open lid of the box. Also, if I made the ‘roof’ of the layout solid it would block the view. So I made a grid using a baking cooling rack, cut to length, and fitted to a wooden frame. To the rack I fixed 20 LED bulbs, bought as a Christmas tree light set which came with its own battery supply.

It was at this point I realised I’d not made any provision to power the two sidings. Fitting wires to the rails in the conventional sense was not an option as I’d left no way of accessing the underside of the track. In the end I soldered copper wire to the fiddle yard end of each rail, which was bent down over the outside of the box side.

The fiddle yard was constructed from a second boxfile, rotated 180° from the first box. Two short lengths of track were used to extend the sidings and a Peco Loco Lift used as the single cassette. The lids of both boxes were arranged to be vertical and a piece of thin MDF used as the backscene between the two. To cover the backscene, a piece of wallpaper lining paper was painted with a fading blue.

Conclusion

I was a great learning experience. I improved my modelling skills in both construction and painting, as well as leaning how to plan the order of things.