Happy Father’s Day. I hope you got your Father’s Day stuff. One child showed some brilliance and extended my subscription to OGR. I liked that as a gift!
So after running a train, it was time to put down more track and place the scenery about where you think you would eventually want it.
My primary focus was the amusement park. In my last layout that had gone inside the 081/072 semi-circle, so this time it was going to go inside the 081/072 reversing loop. There’s a lot of room in there. A lot of the lit buildings were going to go against the back wall and then have a bumper trolley line in front of them. As well as at least 3 tracks to take the circle and dogbone in and out of that area. And if I was lucky, maybe even a passing siding or two.
A word about the basic layout. It took a while to develop it using RR Track. And I ran a couple of my early plans past a few friends. I got some real negative feedback on at least one of the plans so I kept working on it. It’s really good to have some guys who will give you honest feedback. And it’s much better to get it while you’re in the planning stage rather than after the layout is in progress or down.
Anyway, the layout is essentially a circle around a dogbone. It does about a 180 degree turn, and loops back on a second table with walking space in between. No duck unders for this old guy. And because I had the room, I didn’t have to do grades and a second level. The reversing loop and dogbone on the outer table (the one not against the wall) went around 2 pillars which hold the house up. I decided to use my two 4 way switches to have sidings down the middle of that part of the dogbone. So here are the pictures of the layout when we went back to FL at the end of last October. Nowhere near complete, but you begin to get a feel for it. And that’s where it was when we returned a couple of weeks ago.
How do you think those sidings will do coming down between the pillars behind 30th Street Station (which was built for me by Alex). It's a copy of one he did for Marty, and I got Marty's approval before I asked Alex to do it for me.
Gerry
