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The Design for p4newstreet has evolved over several years. Following is a brief history of how it has got this far
The first plan, Drawn In Macromedia Freehand way back in October 2001.
It measures a mere 2’6” by 9’. At this stage it was intended for the layout to be a small end to end and features only half of the platforms of the real location. Looking back the plan is far too compromised and I don't feel the years that have passed to have been wasted as I would hate to have built the layout in this form. The track is shown in blue, The platforms in green and the surrounding structures in yellow.
My Plan went through various subtle changes until arriving at the above plan - Version 4. This one is dated April 2003 and also marks the switch from Freehand to Adobe Illustrator. Size is now 3’6” by 8’ and the platforms have now increased to 10- just 2 less than the real station.
Version 5. I decided to start using track templates at this stage (May 2003). I was planning on doing Flat Bottom track as that is what is there now, The plain track is created using brushes I set up in illustrator.
By Version 6 the decision had been made to go large! At the top is the overall plan, centre the station area and at the bottom the approach from the south.
I abandoned the fancy brushes at this stage as they were taking forever to render, I also switched to Bullhead pointwork as was found at the real station in the late 1980’s It was now September 2004.
Being fairly happy with version 6 I deliberately took a complete break from the planning side of things for a while. I didn’t intend it to be as long as it actually was in the end and the tweaked version 7 didn’t appear until March 2006!
Version 8. The London (left hand) end has been redrawn to better match the prototype. Perhaps the station is a bit too long at the moment but the alignment of both the London and Wolverhampton station throats are now finalised.
The current plan for the station - Version 9. Platform 1 is now a scale 350 metres long. It was actually over length before.