At Scaleforum ’23, The Scalefour Society announced a Jubilee Challenge to mark the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Society, and the 60th anniversary of the P4 standards. The culmination of the challenge will be at Scaleforum ’26, when the various challengers will be put to a public vote.
The competitive element of the challenge is of little interest to me, but the prospect of producing an exhibit to a standard acceptable for display at one of UK’s finest finescale exhibitions is quite motivating. Simply, getting an invite to attend would be a ‘win’ in my eyes,
Thus, there will be a ‘Bexhill West’ entry, although I couldn’t find an element of Bexhill West which would fit within the 18.83 sq. ft. size limitation of the challenge. So, for a change of scene a Midland Railway concept circa. 1900 has been established based upon ‘Navigation Sidings’ a track plan by the late Iain Rice. However, given the changes I’ve made, I have decided to re-name the entry to Navigation Basin.
As with everything else Bexhill West related, I shall set-about the task with enthusiasm, and not allow a lack of knowledge, experience or capability deter me. With sufficient naivety, these qualities can be acquired quite simply by making a lot of mistakes – which I am good at. 🙂
The final track-plan has (almost) been decided upon, and I plan to document the development of the model on these pages over the coming months and years. Naturally, it is my intention to implement Plug Track throughout, and use examples from the model as it develops to illustrate concepts on the tutorial pages of this site.
The ambition is that the model will be fun to operate, with plenty of movement and lots to interest an exhibition visitor. Accordingly, various cameo’s and functioning elements are planned. My motivation being to inspire an interest in finescale modelling to novices (like me), rather than please the rivet-counting-cognoscenti. That said, Midland buffs should appreciate some of the attention to detail and research which has gone into the development of what I hope will be a believable interpretation of a fictional location.
I’ll post more details, and a track plan in the next blog entry.
James
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