Loading Ramp #1

With the basic landscape formations on my layout planned and in progress, I'm now planning how to construct and integrate the loading ramp for lorries om module 2. 

With the limited space available, I have been carefully selecting a prototype and worked on how best to preserve its characteristics in the setting I could offer it. I chose a prototype loading ramp from a clay pit located in a idyllic wooded area close to Dæmpegaard north of Copenhagen. The railway carried clay from the pit to a loading ramp for lorries, taking the clay to the brickworks in Bloustrød a few kilometers away. 

Bloustrød loco no 4 (a 1930's Pedershaab ) with skips at the loading ramp for lorries 1958. Photo: Erik V. Pedersen.

The loading ramp at Dæmpegaard was short and held only 3 skips. The ramp seems to have been built from a heap of readily available materials with not too many dimensions in common. It looks charmingly hapharzardly thrown together and it would probably not be welcomed today by authorities or by anyone having to work on or near it. Good that we have progressed and even better that I have a chance to recreate the mess in model. My model will be a mirrored representation and not a scale model of the real thing. But I hope to encompas most of its characteristics.

The image above is one of many very interesting industrial narrow gauge images captured by Erik V Pedersen, an early pioneering Danish railway enthusiast. Enjoy more images from the Bloustrød brick works here at Erik's elaborate and informative website (in Danish).