Introduction

I've always been keenly interested in railroads, ever since I was a child. Now in my mid-20s, I've found myself finally with enough money and time to engage in what I've always wanted to do - building a model railroad, based around New South Wales, Australia.

Sadly, I'm too young to have seen the railways in the times of old, before the closing of so many branches and yards. It's something that I want to hopefully create - a feel of what it might have been to have operated in those previous times. Of course this is going to be a difficult ask, having never experienced it myself, and it's difficult to find resources, photographs or drawings on most of these long closed lines.

I'd like to try to make the layout authentic to a sort of early-to-mid 1980s time period - a time where most of these now forgotten branchlines were still in operation, but right at the very end of their operational life. Still, this gives me the opportunity to play around with some fairly modern locomotives if I want to (the 81-class for example). Note though, I refer to authenticity, rather than realism. I think there's a big difference between these two ideas. I'm not following a particular line or locality, rather a line "somewhere in NSW".

Regardless, some of the lines I'd like to take some inspiration from would be the Gosford Racecourse branch, Darling Harbour, the Wickham branch and the old Newcastle yards and terminus.

At this stage I have neither the space or money for a huge room sized layout. I would say the size I'd be looking at at the moment would be something around the size of 8' x 4'. It's enough to get some continuous running and a lot of switching movement - something that I very much value over being able to watch trains run a donut for hours.

At this stage, though, I don't have any solid ideas for an exact track plan, locality or even a name - hence Project Martindale. We'll see where it goes from there as I go through the motions of planning and eventually putting it all together.