Track Plan Adjustments

I've made a few adjustments to the track arrangement on my model railroad First, I've removed the second engine servicing track to allow the scene to breathe some more. The removal of this track allows me to include an engine shed while leaving plenty of room for additional trackside details that would have been difficult to squeeze in before.

Additionally, I removed a short storage track on the opposite end of Sandpoint yard as it was too short to spot more than a single car and was all but useless on my layout.

These updates are a result of taking what I've created on virtual paper and laying it down on physical plywood.  I've found that no matter how careful I am when designing a track plan, the reality of turnout length and clearances ultimately requires that I trim back my original intentions.

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Starting over from Scratch

After spending some time with my current layout in it's new space and trying to come up with a design for the expanded railroad that would include those original modules, I've come to the conclusion that they just would not fit the space well and I'd be better served starting over from scratch. 

With that in mind I dove into researching and designing a brand-new layout that would make best use of the space available and would allow me many, many years of enjoyment. I don't ever plan on moving from this home, so this layout will be my fourth and FINAL layout. My dream railroad.

The track plan above (click to view larger) is still a work in progress but it incorporates just about everything I enjoy in model railroading.  The plan is simple, but allows an operator or two plenty of operational enjoyment. If I'm not in the mood for operations, I can even sit back with a beer and enjoy running a couple of trains around in circles. I've included a yard, a nice industrial area, and a couple nice, unencumbered areas where I can enjoy my favorite kind of modeling: Scenery.

True to proto-freelance modeling, the towns and industries located on the layout exist in real life. (though I've taken plenty of liberties with the locations and track arrangement to best serve my needs) The town of Usk stands-in for several towns found in the Pend Oreille Valley and just like on the prototype, the yard at Sandpoint is the Valley's connection with the rest of the world. I've also included a few key scenes found on the prototype including Blueslide tunnel near the crossing of Highway 20, a trestle, and the iconic Box Canyon Bridge.

Designing this track plan has been a challenging and rewarding experience and I have to thank the many talented people on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forums for their expertise in helping me come up with this plan. I'm excited to get started and I cant wait to share my progress with all of you!

A guest at an Ops Session

About a month ago I was invited to join an operating session at a home in my new hometown.  I was excited to have an opportunity to operate on another Modeler's layout as most of my experience seeing other Modelers works in-person has been through small, modular displays at various train shows.

The layout was a fantastic point-to-point style double-deck layout that focused on mainline running and featured a large steel mill.  This steel mill would be my station for the evening.

The job itself was described to me as "easy" and indeed, it was very straight forward. Using my choice of two small switchers, I pulled ignot cars, slag cars, coil and coal cars from spots and placed them at their required locations.  I set out cars for pickup and replaced them with fresh cars from staging.  Over the course of a few hours I actually got to try my hand at a wide variety of operational techniques that were new to me and I only screwed up a few times! (despite having to navigate no less than TWO double-slip switches.)

By the end of the evening I had learned a lot.  I'm very thankful for the opportunity to run on someone else's railroad and it has given me a lot to consider as my designs for the MFR 2.0 continue to evolve.

Movie Mondays #5

Of all they youtube videos I've watched over the years, this four-part series on operating model railroads by Chris Lyon and Mike Hamer has done the best job of introducing the concepts of operations to those of us who know little about how a model railroad should operate.  I found their videos to be invaluable when designing my own little layout. Here's part one, but be sure to check out the other videos in this series as well.

Shedding a Light on Operations

I've been fascinated for a while now at how layout owners and operators handle large ops sessions requiring many people to work together to simulate a days worth real-world operations.  I'll admit it's a part of the hobby that remains largely beyond my understanding. (Though I'd love to take part in a large ops session one day) That said, watching nearly two hours worth of operations unfold on Mike Confalone's Allagash Railway does a lot to shed light on how a well designed operation session unfolds.  Here is a link to a free preview of the video.

If this captures your interest, I highly recommend you subscribe to Trainmasters.tv. It's full of fun videos like this and the production is outstanding.