COPENHAGEN FIELDS
Factfile
Layout name: Copenhagen Fields
Scale/gauge: 2mm:1ft / 1:152 scale / 9.42mm gauge
Size: 22ft x 6ft 9in
Era/region: 1930s London
Layout type: Continuous loops with sidings
Deciding on a prototype to model and making it are two very different things, especially as modelling a ‘busy’ city-scape requires rather more planning than needed for an open green fields scene. The three main protagonists of the new project back in 1983 were myself (dentist), Mike Randall (a woodwork teacher) and John Birkett-Smith (an architect). The original plan evolved from discussion within a much larger group that had developed with our previous bucolic N gauge / 2mm:1ft scale layout, ‘Chiltern Green & Luton Hoo’.
It was always intended that ‘Copenhagen Fields’ would record the history and character of the lands to the immediate north of Kings Cross. The railway scene at Belle Isle, past Gasworks Tunnel on the East Coast Main Line, is the closest bit of main line railway to the Club (apart from the Northern Line tube that runs under our club rooms at Keen House). Belle Isle, a shortened Copenhagen tunnel and the beginnings of the Holloway bank would therefore seem a natural choice for us to model if we wanted to depict an urban railway. While the main lines are in cuttings or tunnels, the Kings Cross Goods Yard opens up into a fan of sidings framed by York Way Viaduct, now but a memory following the HS1 rail development.
Planning begins
During the initial planning phase,
