Thoughts on modelling the Havelock yard

It was Vince who told me that the best way to find the track plan of the Havelock yard is to go to Google Maps. So, over on the left is the yard plan according to Google Maps as of 22 June - you'll need to click on it to get a better view. Did it look like this in the mid-70s? I don't know.

I was thinking about what would be involved to build a simple diorama of the yard - selectively compressed of course - for taking photos. I figured I'd use track from my scrap box to lay out the plan on a 2'x8' piece of thick foam. There'd be a row of trees along the back, and blue sky above. Simple. No station, just track, parking lot, a switch-stand or two, and some scenery. In some ways it might resemble an airport runway scene from Thunderbirds.

Then I thought, do I really care about laying down the exact track plan, or even a compressed version? I've never had a birds-eye view of the yard either in the '70s or now. I've only seen it at eye-level from the parking lot along highway 7, and that's the view from which my memories were created. If all I want to do is to create scenes as I might have or could have seen them, from the vantage point of loitering around the edge of the yard, then something highly simplified may suffice.