Welcome to The Coast!

After years of deliberations and do-overs, Philden finally has a home on the NSW North Coast.

After two years of modelling my Australian HO scale layout Philden Street Yard, 2023 started with the shock decision to uproot my inner-Melbourne inspired layout and transplant it smack-bang on the New South Wales North Coast. It took a little over a month for me to size and rebuild the backdrop, and my new layout Philden Coast can now be revealed against the stunning shoreline of Coffs Harbour, NSW.

This is the layout I first set out to build in 2019. It is a layout that has a connection to some great memories for me, that being our family holidays along the NSW North Coast between 2005 to 2018, in the time before both our kids grew up, moved out and married. I'll never get that time again, and now Dad's famous holiday roadside stops to photograph a train, every station and any railway bridge are immortalised in our loungeroom whenever they come over to visit.

The name and logo for this layout pay hommage to my not-so-distant modelling past. Once more keeping the Philden theme alive, I designed the logo to pay respect to my first North Coast attempt Philden Road, by including the two palm trees that also adorned the Philden Road logo. Along with Philden Street Yard and my original Philden layout, they can now all be viewed in the Philden Museum. And if there's one little gem that is the stand out in the top photo, it's that the Goods Shed has now survived to feature on everyone of my Philden layouts. It may look a little rustier by the seaside, but it's still standing strong!

Philden Street Yard is now Harbour Yard on my NSW North Coast layout Philden Coast.

I've long championed the idea of making backdrops removable in my books, and in the case of revamping a bookshelf layout it allows you to simply slide the old backdrop out and replace it with a new one. The tricky part was aligning the clouds and ocean horizon in the corner behind the warehouse and brown building flat that was affixed to the side backdrop, and it took a couple of attempts at printing, horizontally flipping the image and resizing it to align as close to perfect as was possible, and it is a subject I feel warrants a future book to talk readers through the advanced process. It's a simple enough idea in principle, but one that proves difficult to execute.

The grime and industrial feel of the rail yard is still there, only now it is set against a sub-tropical slice of Aussie paradise. My wife agrees that this is now a much better highlight in our loungeroom!

Thankfully now that the backdrop is in place, my layout can return to being fully operational in its original configuration. I started building Philden Street Yard in the middle of 2021 during that wonderful time of lockdowns during the pandemic. So while the transformation to Philden Coast has only taken place over the past month or so, the layout module, track configuration, structures, overpass and scenery all date back to 2021. The framework dates back even further, as it was the original base that supported Philden Road. There were a lot of mixed reasons for my deciding to walk away from modelling my Victorian inspired layout, and I explain why on my Philden Museum page if you care to read more. But for this post... It's celebration time!

Harbour Yard is my fictional reincarnation of Coffs Harbour Yard. Despite the actual yard being removed after 1996, I reinstated it to serve a newly built private industry and to provide service tracks for Thunderbird rescue locomotives for any stranded trains on the North Coast line.

Any new layout project needs a new locomotive for that extra excitement. So who else managed to get their hands on the latest BL Class locomotive from Auscision Models? They're just lovely aren't they? I'd go as far as saying they're perhaps the best sounding locomotive I've owned to date. Part of the appeal of modelling a broader period of time, (2005-2018), is the ability to simply enjoy models of the trains you've enjoyed seeing in real life. So I'm no longer letting myself get bogged down in making lists of which numbered locomotive ran on which line in what livery at a particular time. I've done that in the past, and after a while it does your head in and just feels like you are limiting your enjoyment to modelling a cloudy day in August.

Even the seagulls look more at home by Philden Harbour.

By the time I convert the staging shelf into a fully-scenicked adjoining module, Philden Coast will be 3.3 metres long, and have two separate yards, Philden Beach and Philden Harbour, connected by a short single tracked bridge over Coffs Creek. Hence the name Philden Coast to cover both locations. I believe it will be most enjoyable to operate with 3 to 4 locomotives at a time, so for that I don't need a large fleet to be able to cover a broad spread of years. Central to me being able to pull-off modelling something representative of the North Coast line during those years was being able to add some Pacific National locomotives. I did so by getting the recently released BL28 in the PacNat intermodal livery as was seen on the North Coast, and by adding a 3rd NR Class locomotive to my collection in the form of NR22. Combined with my existing Indigenous pair of NR Class locos, my weathered CFCLA pairing of ex-422 and 442 diesels, and a soon to come C Class, I have a loco for every day of the week.

I'm more than happy to have transformed this layout into my own slice of miniature railfan paradise!

So next up are some bridge repairs to the Philden Street overpass, (apparently the locals are complaining about some obselete tram tracks breaking through the road surface), some signage for the Brandon Industries warehouse, (suppliers to the seafood industry), some lettering on the brown building flat behind it, (Harbourside Services Club) and a sign for the just completed haunted bookstore at the top of Philden Street, (Harbour Booooks!). The Jetty Hotel with views over the umm.... jetty, remains the only structure for me to complete to say that this half of the layout is both complete, and completely revamped.

I'm very happy to have my joy back for this layout. Afterall, that is the sole purpose of building a model railway. Now if you'll excuse me for the weekend, I have some bubbles to pop, and some trains to run. This should be fun! Have a great weekend everyone, and if you like my little North Coast layout or even if you managed to purchase a BL Class loco, let me know in the comments below.