Being an urban sort of chap, the one thing that represents the very quintessence of the British landscape for me is the cooling tower. That's not to say I've ever wanted to buy a house next to a stand of these near-extinct structures, (such things are fine as long as they're in somebody else's back yard,) but they'll always be towards the top of my list of things that would really 'set the scene' on a model railway layout. Unfortunately their size mitigates against their inclusion, especially on a loft layout, but I can still dream.
The above photo has been the wallpaper on my PC for about the last week now, simply because it captures the very soul of our railway landscape so well for me. I'm thankful that the unknown photographer spent a moment documenting this scene so I could enjoy it all these years down the line, especially as it dates from an era when most photographers were even more pre-occupied with locomotives than they are now.