Anyway, the general idea came from the Irish R.M. series of books by Somerville and Ross, who lived down in Castletownsend near Skibbereen in Co Cork, and the fact that the area had several light railways. The West Cork origins of the authors gave me the idea for a line based somewhat on S&S. Their creation, Skebawn, is a small town with few pretensions which seems to lack a BG railway. So I came to the conclusion that the nearest station was some miles away, and that the town had had the misfortunate to be always the bridesmaid and never the bride when it came to the local BG railway schemes until one fine day, the 1883 Tramways Act, Clan Knox, several bottles of 'the Mischief'; and the local capacity for skullduggery got together and produced the S&CLR&T.
As the project developed the "&T" part of it grew less important so that, like the Cork and Muskerry, it ended up mainly light railway with the odd burst of tramway. The tramway sections being where the course of the railway coincides with the garden path.
Anyhoo...
The railway specifics ended up coming from a variety of Irish lines - mainly T&DLR and S&SR, but not exclusively so. The IMR will be thrown in when I start thinking about buildings because I think the original wooden Peel line buildings sort of fit in with the Tramway and Light Railway ambiance. I am surprised that there is not more Manx influence given my narrow gauge up-draggings. The goods stock tends to be fairly standard stuff. My assumption is that after an initial 'bulk buy' from Oldbury the S&C bought three wagons here and three wagons there as the need arose. However the 4-wh passenger stock is S&S inspired -extra carriages for the tramway section when it finally opened, whilst two of the bogie vehicles are T&D inspired, one is freelance, and one is derived from a Clogher Valley 24' all-first. There may even be some Ballycastle or Manx Northern Cleminsons before long as I have always fancied having a go at a Cleminson underframe.
My thoughts about the buildings tend to be Isle of Man inspired. I have a suspicion that something Crosby like will appear somewhere along the line, and that Skebawn will get something based on the original Peel station. The minor halt at Shreelane will be getting something in wood and wiggley tin. I was originally think of wooden and tin for all the buildings, but the initial round of building on Irish lines tended to be fairly substantial, so loco sheds and goods sheds may well be rough local stone structures.
The original idea was definitely mainly a Tramway, based largely on the Schull and Skibbereen, but the Skebawn and Castleknox has developed a more 'light railway persona as it has been constructed mainly as the line moved to a safer location in the yard. The first idea was to build it alongside the garden path, but this was abandoned for two reasons. One, that side of the garden is vulnerable when it does rain, and secondly, the grades were horrible - up to 1 in 20! After that I tried a line over the rocks route which was much drier, but had a high summit level meaning a sustained 1 in 24 against northbound trains. No much better! Version 3 went back to paralleling the path, but required too much in the way of engineering, So - after a geological survey with a screw driver or an old steel knitting needle (I forget which) I discovered I could lowered the summit level by about foot at the expense of some winding track. This had the bonus of shortening the amount of heavy gradient against northbound trains down to about 1 in 36. I am about halfway through track laying on that version right now. The winter saw me get to about two-thirds of the passenger stock built, but still only a quarter of the goods stock.
As for buildings I think some, the most elaborate, will have to live inside in the worst of our weather, but I am going to try one or two test structures outside and see how they fare. I think detail is going to have to be sacrificed to some degree to promote durability. If I can get small section hardwood, then I will frame build the goods shed, loco shed, and the other structures will be marine plywood shells well lathered in preservative to keep the bugs off then faced to resemble rough stonework. If I get 5 years outside with any of them I will consider a minor victory over the insects.
Peter in AZ
Sorry to hear about the derailment mind,glad the drainage improvements have paid off 