The mountains were definitely the most exciting part of the early project. Mike had spent a lot of time designing the incline and so it was obvious that the slate mine needed to be ready for that. The height was determined by the length of incline and angle it needed to be.
The also needed to be train tunnels through the mountain. The main to complete circular track. The bottom exit for the slate carrying and the top short tunnel into for the OO train to appear to leave.
In order to design a plausible slate mine we spent some time on a visit to the slate mines around Festiniog. Open slate mines were made up of terraces, with flights of steps linking them and the incline passing down through the levels. Inside the mines there were also many levels below ground, where the slate was raised to the top of inclines to be brought down in trucks. The main buildings were at the bottom, but other buildings were build on some of the levels. Because of the restricted space of our mine there was only had enough horizontal space to for three levels, but that seemed to look fine.
The whole mountain came rather higher than Mike thought – but definitely in the right proportion to the village.
