Over the past few days I’ve been working on a magazine article and needed to draw out some plans of the development on Queens Wharf from its life as a drop in module into my current layout through to what exists today. Then I drew a plan for the yard as I’d like to arrange it if I wasn’t crimped by the existence of the buildings that pre-dated the needs of the current layout and were restricting what I could do.
Then I started to take the next logical steps:

The inevitable conclusion of thinking about where you’d like to get to is that you start looking at ways of achieving that goal. I don’t know how many times I’ve stood in front of this part of the layout and thought to myself, “it’s a shame these buildings are in the way. If they weren’t here I could…” There are quite a number of ways this sentence has ended over the past couple of years. However I’ve never sat down and drawn out a plan of what I might do with Queens Wharf yard if there was nothing in the space getting in the way of where I’d like to lay track. In making up the diagrams for the track plans I was working on for the article I had to put them side by side on a single sheet of paper so they could easily be compared.
Now you need to remember that a week or so ago I’d made the decision to upgrade the track at the entrance to the dairy siding about 2m (approximately 7′) further up the line, so I’d already removed half the scenery that was crimping what I might be able to do with Queens Wharf’s track arrangement. Then I started working on a scale plan of what I could do if I had nothing in my way. You probably know where this is going…

It took about 15 minutes to remove the buildings from this part of the layout and about 1 1/2 hours to work out why trains would no longer run on a section of track just beyond the new station. All the buildings are now sitting safely on shelves in the storage cupboard that occupies the corner of the layout room. I’ve made no attempt to repair any damage. I’ve just gathered up the bits that came loose as I hit parts of the bases -bases that certainly weren’t designed to be hit with a hammer – placed these in a plastic container and put them away without looking too closely at the damage I’d caused.
I’ll save posting any photos of the damage to these structures when I’ve pulled almost all the track up, made brand new track (including 5 or 6 new turnouts), wired it all back up and made a new control panel and then set about working on the scenery of Queens Wharf. I can’t publish the track plans I drew that prompted this destructive phase because these are destined for an upcoming issue of a US track planning magazine which appears annually. If I can ever get it written to my own satisfaction and the editor considers it worthy of inclusion. It’ll probably appear about the same time I get all the work on QW’s new track arrangement completed, sometime in 2022 would be my guess.
Two days ago I removed the ship model next to Morpeth’s pier and took it inside to start completing it. I’d last worked on this in 2018 but I’d never completed it so I thought this would be a good time to get it finished and back on the layout. I was even thinking about making a blog post about it. How the heck did I go from working on a model of a ship to ripping out completed scenery and most of the track at Queens Wharf? π