The World Championship Railroad Race!

Last week saw a much anticipated trip to the new production of Starlight Express at Wembley Park, London. After 23 years of waiting, having been just a bit too young travelled to have see the original, I was incredibly worried this new updated version was going to shatter all those hopes of a much younger seven year old me.

I loved every second of it. If anything, this new version was better than anything my younger self had dreamed of. An incredibly fun three hours, highly recommended! 

But during the long train journey back to the north I did have time to think. Could Starlight Express work as the theme for a model railway layout? Well, yes, and I know I'm not the only person to have thought of this.

German Model Railway Manufacturer Marklin produced a few train packs based on characters from the show in Z gauge many years back (Probably worth mentioning, there's been a permanent version of the show in Bochum since 1988!) and whilst I don't think the sets are in production any more, a quick internet search reveals many on the second hand market. I quite like the look of the generic Starlight branded tank engine and caboose:

Image from invaluable.com

Due to the small 6.5mm track gauge of Z you could probably set up a four track circuit imitating certain aspects of the stage layout to race trains round quite easily. The only thing missing would be the music and race commentary by Control!

Back to my travel musings though, and thoughts turned to a slightly larger scale, and to a different aspect of the story. The main character of Rusty the steam engine (Represented in some parts of this new show by a very nice model of a Jinty, I'd love to see a close up image of it!) spend much of their time being ordered about by Control to fetch the coaches and wagons. By pure chance there's four coaches and wagons in this version. A standard inglenook shunting puzzle requires eight items of rolling stock, plus engine. The germ of an idea was doodled out:

"Starlight Sidings"

A very crude doodle I know, but there really isn't much to say track wise. A standard 5-3-3 inglenook sidings layout, contained in a 'James Hilton' style case to try and create a night time effect. Very low, or even non existent, lighting on the layout side of the back scene could enhance this. The back scene itself however would be something quite different.

Making it 'double skinned' would allow an internal cavity to fit some LED strips, coupled with a series of holes drilled into the back scene it would hopefully create a starlight effect. You'll also notice there's no actual scenic work besides the back boards. It would be very much a layout to play trains on. Other than the stars the only other scenic element would be to inlay all of the rails, just allowing the rail tops to shine on the dark navy blue baseboard top, very much trying to imitate the simplistic tracks painted onto the stage in the show.

Image from Hattons.

Rolling stock would be equally simple, yet slightly challenging. Instead of creating a realistic engine and wagons I'd be trying to imitate toy and model trains of old, not quite the old Hornby Tinplate variety, but close. It's for this reason I'd be very tempted to try this layout in N gauge. An old Graham Farish Jinty with its simpler moulded body work would work for the style I want to go for, whilst the other required rolling stock could easily be made up from the PECO wagon kits. There'd be a temptation to try cut and shut some of the 15ft wagon bodies onto 10ft chassis to try and emulate the train set style.

I'll have to think some more about this. It's one of those ideas that I know will upset a large chunk of people who wouldn't consider it 'proper' railway modelling, but there's no denying it could be a lot of fun!