Why would an American with nearly 40 years modeling in HO suddenly have a craving to switch to British OO, and model a town in Cornwall he'd never seen?
It's a long story, so grab a cuppa coffee and settle back. It all started about 6 years ago when I ran across Tim Bourne's SIAM railway simulations. The demo version of operations in Penzance really caught my attention as a wonderful track plan for a shelf layout -- long and thin with a station, yard and engine facility stretched out along a double-track main line. My original planning was to use the track plan and build a new fantasy US layout in HO.
Before too long I decided instead to model the actual Penzance location, and learn something about all those strange locomotive types -- Castles, Halls, Granges, shunters, and the way British railways worked.
But rather than continue this story right here and make a very long homepage... I'm going to break it up into sections so you can skip about as you wish, if you wish.
There's bits here about the real Penzance and my emerging model of it.
Getting Started
The Station at Penzance
Long Rock Locomotive Depot
Signal Boxes
Construction Details
About me
Acknowledgements, Resources and Links
Email: dick@rails.net