Laying out the marshaling yard for my 1/72 WW2 terrain board

As most of the stuff I need for the railway marshaling yard part of my WW2 board has now arrived I thought it was time to lay it all out and see how it looks. I intend to base everything on a hardboard sheet with the 'rough' side up which I will paint grey and weather to represent the rail yard itself. I will then permanently attach the track to the hardboard but I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to base the buildings or just place them on the board as they are now.

What's on the board now has cost me £76.84 but I still have some buildings and fences to add which will make the total for the 4' x 2' board £116.34. However I may be able to recoup some of the cost by selling some spare track from the job lot I bought on eBay. Even so I will have just about funded both boards anyway with the proceeds from selling off a bunch of GW stuff on eBay!

The shot below shows the layout I'll probably go with (model railway enthusiasts will probably be aghast with the errors I've made). I will be adding a station and a goods shed so may move things around to fit. Of course I can move the rolling stock wherever I like to get some variety in the layout for each game. I also have a couple of sheets of vacuum formed shell holes so I'll be sprinkling a few of those around to add flavour. This will also let me use a couple of the damaged rolling stock wagons with the shell holes as bombed out wrecks.

A station will be added to the foreground and a goods shed in the back right corner.

Side view

Rear view

 

In the photo below I've added an EWM 20mm Vickers Mk VI tank and a few Valiant 1/72 British Tommies to give you some idea of the scale.

 

Finally a few low level shots to give you a flavour of how things will look.

 

The buildings still to arrive are the Metcalfe Goods Shed and the Parcels Office & Waiting Rooms, both shown below.

 

My next task is to lay out the roads for the city half of my board, add the buildings I already have and then decide on what else I need to add. I already have an idea of how I want things to look, I'll just have to see if it works out in practice.