This is the first sketch I drew, to get a feel for the idea. The road overbrige forming a scenic break was an obvious feature right from the start even to the extent of extending the road to cover some of the traverser below. The factory building has 2 unloading dock spaces that would take a couple of short 4 wheel wagons. The pipe bridge was an idea for hiding the exit to the sector plate on the left. I very quickly however felt the idea was too cramped. Running a 2 car DMU would be impractical on this layout the fiddle yards each end would be twice the length of the layout. But I liked the idea enough to persevere with it and develop it further.

Doubling the length gives the layout more room to breathe. This is much better. There's space between the road bridge and the factory building. I also decided to create the impression that the line could be double tracked by having the running lines enter the scene parallel and widen to enter the island platform, a nice idea that appealed to me. The movement of the train will then give some depth to the scene instead of the just plain left right, right left motion if all three track were parallel. The factory is based on the Staybrite factory in Sheffield, adding a prototype building in there adds to the believability of the scene. The gated entrance to a factory yard as an exit to the traverser, though a sound idea was not on the prototype and just didn't work for me.

So I did the obvious thing. I put a signal box in there to hide the exit. It looks like a railway scene now. But it's still not right. It was then I took the decision to move the signal box to the front and put a wagon in a siding to act as a view block at the back of the scene as you see in the final version. Then I was happy.