Dominion Textile... an alternative?

Yesterday, we built a mock up to see if the new proposition for Dominion Textile was standing the test of reality. The benchwork was enlarged up to 28 inches deep to be able to feature a large brick factory wall like the prototype. I must admit that over the last year, I've become addicted to scenes with a deep foreground that set the models into the scenery in a convincing manner. In fact, Dominion Textile scene - including Villeneuve - is one of our rare scene to showcase a "non-railway related" point of view. What you see is what any people not working on the railway would have seen while driving on a nearby road. That's an interesting feature where you can truly appreciate a train simply crossing an area...
 

The layout before we built the mock up

I've got mixed feeling so I'll let it settle down for a while before taking a final decision. Sure, having a train appearing behind a huge structure makes a nice impression. In fact, it feels the trains come from somewhere.

 As a matter of following the prototype, I must admit this looks just like my memories of Dominion Textile. I have a few fuzzy memories of the train appearing in such a dramatic way.

Imagine the leading locomotive is crossing a small bridge while passing by industrial ruins.

I now need to test if the electric powerhouse ruins are enough to give coherence to the corner where Dominion stood until now. I took the afternoon to measure every parts of the ruins on site. Very impressive stuff, more on that later. Last time I visited the area on foot was about 17 years ago. Since then, vegetation grew up at a fast pace, hiding most features from the sight.