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FARKHAM
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Welcome to our home page we will be adding new information to this site soon, stay on line. Its Summer 1990, England have just lost to West Germany in the World Cup, but in the quiet Midlands town of Farkham life goes on as normal. The town is served by an occasional passenger service with freight being the main traffic on this secondary railway line. Beyond the station and town centre, the land opens out to reveal a small freight yard served by trip workings and Speedlink services, whilst the main line gently curves away with a mixture of old and new buildings following its course.
The
concept behind Farkham was to capture the atmosphere of an urban scene
with the railway passing through. This has been attempted, by locating
buildings and trees at the front of the layout to break-up the direct
lines of sight between the viewer and the trains, so when looking at the
model the trains will come in and out of view creating a series of
interesting ‘cameos’. This encourages the viewer to look into the layout
and not just at it and siting the twin tower blocks at the front, along
with other large structures and trees, has created visual barriers to
enable this. The yard on the layout is portrayed in a run down, but still
functioning state, very much how a number of freight terminals were in the
late 1980s/early 1990s. Finally to create a realistic scene and make
everything visually blend together, each item has been weathered to
differing degrees, just like on the prototype. Trackwork on the layout is all hand built using C&L and Peco components and is to finescale 16.5mm gauge standards. The major aspect of the model is its buildings and structures and whilst some of these are modified kits, most have been scratch built. The rolling stock on the layout is detailed, repainted and weathered with a large number of kit and scratch built items.
See Farkham in the April 2005 edition of the Railway Modeller |