This is giving the thread a tremendous bump but, after a very long time away from the route, I've been working on it again for the last few weeks. I'd become completely bogged down at Kimberley and had the equivalent of writer's block. I'm still struggling to see how to do much there in the editor - the terrain in the station area is extremely complex - but the urge to work on the route returned after Christmas. Rather than go back to banging my head on a brick wall I decided to leave it for now, move to the eastern side of Watnall tunnel and start on Nuthall, Cinderhill and the area around Bulwell North station. The last has been and still is a real challenge. There is a huge housing estate to the north and that's just a matter of planting houses but the older parts, closest to the line, must have been hell to live in. For example, literally across the road from the nurses' home at Highbury Hospital (a Gothic former workhouse that I'm trying to bodge from existing assets) was a bleaching works. Across the line from the hospital was a dye works. Next door to the bleaching works was a boys' secondary school and on the opposite side of the school was a maltings! Luckily, a lot of that can simply be a basic factory asset.
The Bagnall Dye Works is a different matter. It's next to the line and the line is on an embankment so it will be visible. I'm still deciding whether to spend time trying to make it look like this or just bodge it. This is a 1928 photo from the Britain From Above website but the outlines on the mid-fifties OS maps match almost perfectly so it clearly didn't change much.
The tanks on the RHS are interesting. One must be for water and the other, I guess, for chemicals. I'm sure I've seen an asset something like the nearer one but can't remember where, which is frustrating.
- Water Tanks Bagnall Dye Works 1928.jpg (30.08 KiB) Viewed 10931 times
Just to give you a taste of what I've managed so far between Basford and Bulwell this area had the Midland line to Mansfield in but there were no buildings here at Christmas. The embankment bearing off to the left was the stump of the Midland Bennerley branch that closed as a through route in WW1 but stumps remained until much, much later at both ends to serve industrial customers. Nick's laid the track on that since this was snapped. This viewpoint is the top of the GNR embankment so you can imagine how far I'm going to have to put the scenery.
And the good news is Brian's modelling again. His current project is the Up waiting room building for Kimberley, complete with a mesh waste-paper basket on the wall.....
Keith