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What is all this gibberish? |
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| I've been a keen roleplaying gamer for 20 years, and my world of Mhorann has grown complex and detailed. When building a railway, I needed a name for the layout, and it was only natural to pick a name from Mhorann. A major character from one campaign had settled down in the little village of Melmin, in the East Marches, and it seemed entirely logical to use the name. Of course, originally I had no particular plans to take any more than the name, but my family kept teasing me about the railway and the name, and suggested that there would be orcs and monsters in Melmin. The idea took root, and I began to wonder what Mhorann would become in a few hundred years. A fantasy world of elves, dwarves, hobbits and monsters - but with steam trains. The East Marches had always been England in disguise, and so the look of the layout was no problem. I've always enjoyed world-building (why rolegaming has always suited me), and so I began to think about the details of the area, how the railway would impact on the community, and what Mhorann would be like. The layout is still a long way from being finished, but I hope to post updates every three or four months to show how it is developing. | ||
CONSTRUCTION DETAILS. | ||
| My major endeavour is to design and build most of the structure of the layout myself, rather than relying on commercial products. | ||
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My secret weapon assisting me with this is the Campaign Cartographer Pro Dioramas software package, which enables me to design a building and print it on card. When constructed, they look pretty good. A few of the buildings are commercial kits (Metcalfe or Wills, plus Airfix), but the majority are CC-Pro designed and built from scratch. Some of them don't look too bad. | |
| Electrics are a little idiosyncratic. I am slowly extending lighting around the layout; the hobbit village, the station, two factories and the village houses have lights, and I am working on street-lighting. |  | |
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The rolling stock is based on Hornby locos, pulling a mixture of Hornby trucks and plastic kits, mostly Dapol (ex-Airfix) or Wills. Most of the locos are recent purchases, but one - Polly - goes back to when I was no more than 10. Thirty years later, having been in a box for 25 of those years, she still runs (just). The "Magus" class is (of course) the Airfix Mogul, minus its front wheels, and powered by the 0-6-0 motor unit from a Thomas the Tank engine diesel. | |
| Plastic kits provide a good range of the more substantial detailing, including a Scarab, a couple of (somewhat adapted) aircraft (Auster and Anson - both Airfix), and a CooperCraft lorry. |  | |
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More intriguing figures than the usual are difficult to come by, but are slowly appearing. A small number of dwarves (the number increased by adapting human figures), a few HO figures judiciously adapted into orcs and elves, and a few rolegaming figures give the air of fantasy. | |
| A few more fantastical figures are creeping onto the layout (mostly 15mm individuals from fantasy ranges, especially the "Black Hat" martians from Fighting 15s, plus the Preiser punks painted as orcs); these are helping considerably to increase the "fantasy" air to the layout. |
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The druidess is officially 25mm, from a company called Reider Designs in Leicester in the mid-80s - the company now does Alchemy metalwear, and the figures are long gone. | |
| The impressive martians are 18mm "Black Hat" figures, which work superbly. |  | |
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The pick of the martians is this "gent" on the station platform, in natty suit with topper. | |
| The biggest problem for the look of the layout is the presence of the beams that support the roof. For obvious reasons I'm not going to cut the beams (!), so I have to work round them. Hence the use of photoshop skies in some of the pictures. | ||
(c) Peter Vialls 2006: Page design by Peter Vialls: Last updated 21/3/06
