The jetty gets its legs (well, half of them!)

Didn't get a great deal done today, but I did manage to get the supports for half of the jetty made from the clay. I also decided to work out whereabouts the track would go, and after a bit of shuffling we have this:

The trackwork has changed here a little in that both points are now Y-points (instead of one being a left-handed point). This means I can get slightly more track in - not much, but every little helps!

The big space where the drawing is will be almost entirely the tidal salt marsh. I've been researching about this a little bit, and I want to make it be as realistic as possible. I will be using a combination of aerial footage and ground level photos to make it as close as possible to the real thing.

In an ideal world, I'd model a lot more of the jetty, particularly more of the straight section of the jetty. But the codeword in railway modelling is compromise, unfortunately! (Unless you have a lot of money and a lot of space!). Anyway, the loop as you can see is designed to hold a maximum of 4x 4-wheeled wagons. This is the most common length of trains on the prototype, so this is what I've gone with on the layout.

These two final photos show the 8 smaller supports. I've no idea what I will be doing for the wider section of the jetty. Whether it will be a wider version of the current supports I've made, or something simpler I've no idea. I can't get a decent photograph of the prototype to compare with either, unfortunately.

I couldn't resist trialling them under the old jetty I made. In reality, the supports also form part of the jetty deck i.e. the narrow gauge track should really sit flush with the large middle section of the supports. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to build the deck, but I may have to change it from the prototype slightly. I have some "steel" beams that would be ideal for the sides (even if unprototypical!)