The Art of Compromise

 

The Art of Compromise

The Art of Compromise is a small OO scale layout built from a plan in the October 1978 Railway Modeller, mainly to see if it could be made to work. It can... with a few tweaks. At 6' long by 1' wide it's a fairly low impact plan and is ideal for a first scale layout, with only four points and no sections to worry about.

The buildings are mainly from Wills and Ratio kits and with one exception are from ranges that were available around the time that the original 1978 article was published. So not only was the challenge to fit it into the physical space, but also to (where possible) keep to items that were around in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The scenery is made from paper towels over card formers and covered with Woodlands Scenic ground foam material with a little dyed sawdust thrown in to keep the 40 year old vibe. Track is code 100 Peco streamline with medium radius points.

Rolling stock

 Likewise, the rolling stock used follows the late 1970s/early 1980s theme with items from Hornby, Airfix, Mainline, Ratio, Slaters and Cooper Craft most of which were either from, or rooted in the same period of production.

A new article

As a celebration of the 40 year anniversary of the original plan, the layout was featured in the October 2018 issue of Railway Modeller alongside the original plan and artwork by Roy Link.

 The building of the layout has been documented in the main part of the blog. Search  'AotC' in the search box top left to bring up the posts in reverse order.

The layout was subsequently sold to BRM magazine where it featured in several modern upgrade articles and was more recently raffled off. Thus the baseboards have featured in two layouts, several magazine articles and have survived three owners. My much maligned method of MDF foundations appears to have some validation.