CURIOSITE MINE TRAMWAY
That's Curious-ite - a very rare and not very valuable ore that's mined in this little harbour-side mining complex, served by an 18" gauge light railway.
The layout's another 500mm x 500mm cubic challenge. The base is 3mm MDF on a 40 x 19 frame and high-density polystyrene foam's been used to create the various levels. Cork floor tiles form the road bed.
While the layout's in HO scale, the track is Z gauge (6.5mm) (Micro-Trains flexible track) and the loco shown is an Egger-Bahn #2 with a Marklin Mini-Club 0-6-0 mechanism embedded in it. Rolling stock will be Egger-Bahn mine type wagons regauged from 9 to 6mm. The layout's deliberately simple - an out-and-back or point-to-point. Deliberately - because Z scale points do not have tight enough radii - points are eliminated. I'm tired of small locos stalling on points - so, they're out!
One loco will pull the wagons up from the quay to the plant and the other, maybe a diesel, will take them back down, depositing their ore or slag at the appropriate level into a coaster.
The harbour - with stone walls - will have a suitably grimy coaster loading ore from the plant (basic outline building temporarily in place) via an overhead conveyor. Slag will be similarly deposited in the coaster from the intermediate level. The mine, at the back, will comprise a winding house, a lift shaft with poppet wheel, and a multi-storey conglomeration with an overhead conveyor to the plant and a rail line crossing the steep road between the mine to the plant.
Keep watching progress!