THE HIDDEN SIDING

A fiddleyard serves both a practical purpose (you have a space in which to swap trains around) and a symbolic purpose (your trains leave the layout and go somewhere else, in the wider world). This layout was so small (110cm by 40cm) that I didn’t have room for a fiddleyard. However, I wanted somewhere to represent the ‘rest of the world’ - somewhere to hide my railcar so that it looks as though it has embarked on a journey somewhere. I decided to create a hidden tunnel from one of the sidings. Inspiration came from Germany. At Emmelshausen, in the Rhine Valley, a single track line leaves the terminus and curves its way through tall and overhanging trees that are so densely packed they made a virtual tunnel. I thought that something similar would work here.