The Top End 1942
How it began
It all started a couple of years ago when, by chance, I came across a couple of photos of Darwin in 1942. One showed the waterfront during the initial bombing and the second showed troops lined up on the jetty railway with wagons behind. At the time, I had no idea that a railway existed in the Northern Territory prior to the current standard gauge. Research started. A couple of books on the North Australia Railway (NAR) were located and purchased. These revealed an intriguing story of an eclectic mix of rolling stock and some decidedly quirky operations, that just had to be modelled. The fact that I had never seen a NAR layout provided further motivation.
At the time I had a large, British-based OO scale railway in a dedicated railway room. However the decision had been made to downsize and move to a smaller house in which I could only expect a bedroom as both office and railway room. Therefore planning had to start on a new and much smaller layout and it would be based on the North Australia Railway.
Layout Design
As far as I was aware, there were absolutely no ready-to-run or kit-based locomotives or rolling stock available. This left the question of scale completely open. However, the layout was going to need some military vehicles and quite a few troops, all of which were readily available in 1:48 scale, so that simplified the choice. The
