A unique and interesting idea?

Prompted by this post on rmweb I got thinking about a couple of things.

Firstly in that post, it was discussed about restoring 18000 and her history. I have a fascination with the prototype and the oddball.

For those who don’t know, 18000 was a gas turbine powered locomotive ordered in 1946 by the GWR and built by Brown, Boveri & Cie. It was eventually sold to the Swiss, who modified it. It now resides at Didcott.

I do have an interest in modelling the prototypes, both diesel and otherwise. Amongst these are:

• English Electric‘s ‘Deltic‘
• The above mentioned Brown, Boveri & Cie 18000
• Metropolitan-Vickers 18100
• English Electric GT3
• English Electric DP2
• SR/BR(S) Bulleid 4-DD
• SR/BR(S) Bulleid Leader
• SR/BR(S) Bulleid 10201/10202/10203
• Fell 10100
• SR/BR(S) CC1/CC2
• SR/BR(S) Diesel Shunter 15xxx (later BR class 12) & 11001

There are others that might interest me at some stage in the future, including the BR Advanced Passenger Train (APT-E/APT-P), both the gas-turbine and the electric version.

All of the above could make interesting projects to build dioramas around possibly.

What is interesting in the case of the gas turbines is that whilst they were all deamed failures due to the wish to standardise on diesels at the time, today gas turbines power ships, submarines and even shift gas around the country.

Secondly in that post, it was pondered about modelling the GWR broad gauge, and the difficulties therein. It was mentioned about whether broad, standard or narrow gauge ever met anywhere.

My thought was such a location could make for an interesting diorama or micro-layout. Although it holds little appeal to me personally as whilst Brunel was a genius, the GWR holds little interest to me, with my interests firmly set on the Southern Railway/BR Southern Region and London Underground. But it would be interesting to see someone make such a idea reality!