Update

I've had a couple of weeks hiatus, including a week away and another that was completely taken up with other commitments. I did manage to scribble some notes (while on a train, appropriately enough) that I will write up soon.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to play with maps and hex grids. I downloaded the UK rail map and imported it into Corel Draw so that it overlays the map I was working on. After printing the map and hex grid (just on A4 paper), I'm drwing on 18xx tiles in pencil to see what works.

There are several hexes in the Midlands and North that have connections to all their neighbours. For these, I'm toying with tiles such as the BGM tiles from 1829/1825, so that the routes through the tiles may be more restricted than a simple 6-way station. The intention is to give more strategy to the tile laying in these areas (and to represent the different historical routes more explicitly).

Further south, the routes into London tend to follow patterns that correspond to green plain track tiles. However, there are many small towns here that ought to be represented on the map. This needs more thought and experimentation.