Shepton on heavy freight duty. Image © Mick Thornton

Hugh Norwood pays tribute to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books with his Angst-Lesspork 009 railway layout, exhibited last year at LonCon 3.

Helping to set the scene are the Alchemists’ Guildhall (complete with stuffed alligator), one of the many Watch houses, a (working) Clacks tower and, of course, Mad Lord Snapcase’s Cruet set. Looming over the rear is the back of the Theatre. There are also a number of privies to be found. Most of the buildings are scratch-built from card; a number are illuminated and so have internal decoration.

Human figures in Victorian / Edwardian costume are readily available; finding wizards, dwarfs, trolls and other out of the ordinary figures is more problematic. Fortunately, the war-gaming fraternity could supply many of these figures. The Librarian – and the stuffed alligator – were commissioned pieces.

Angst-Lesspork is already famous among model train aficianados, having been featured in the January 2013 issue of Railway Modeller.

Norwood has also done something thematic for the table the layout sits upon when shown in public —

A number of times at exhibitions, people have asked me where the elephants were, that support the “world”. Well I decided that I should attempt to produce some “feet” to be visible below the skirt that hangs at the front of the layout.

Layout on display at LonCon 3 in 2014. Look carefully and you’ll see an elephant foot under the table.

You can take even an imaginary train ride around town in this video, shot with a “keyfob” camera mounted on a flatcar.

[Thanks to James Bacon for the link.]