Staging…
Since my Father and I are building the same railroad but different ends,
we have decided to have an area that is between both layouts that will not be
modeled. If space is available, we plan on putting the layouts together when he
retires and then model this area together. This area will be represented by the
staging yard at the north end of the layout. In all of my other track plans I
have had several things that I was happy with but I haven't been able to put two
staging yards into any of them.
Then, after months of drawings and planning, I figured out how to run my
staging yards. There will be one peninsula that will come out into the room.
It's big enough to hide a staging yard. My design will allow entry from both
sides of the peninsula so that trains can enter or exit either end of the
layout. From either entrance the mainlines will join and come down the length of
the yard, turn on a reversing loop and then enter one of the double ended
staging yards. There will be yard tracks on either side of the main representing
the towns on either end of the railroad. This will allow me to run a few through
freights as well as only build 1 passenger train.
For the north end of the layout I will have the staging yard that
represents the town of Mears. Trains leaving Mears will come out of a tunnel and
run along the edge of the peninsula to the opposite side and enter the yard at
El Lobo. Trains leaving for the south end of the line will have a climb up to
Blanchard Springs. These will be trains coming in from the Sand City Extension.
I am also thinking about having a line come from staging at a different location
and rejoin the Sand City line to represent D&RGW traffic that is coming into
Blanchard Springs with interchange traffic.
Benchwork…
One of my other hobbies is woodworking. I'm planning on doing a general
framing on the base of the layout but I want to face it out so that the layout
looks like it is setting on top of a large set of cabinets. With the layout
being around three feet deep I'm planning on the base to be around 2 and one
half feet deep. This will allow a large amount of storage under the layout which
is very much needed in my house at the time.
After a visit to a friend's layout in Houston I decided to go with stud
wall benchwork. I'm building the walls on 16 inch centers. The upper section
base is 40 inches tall and the lower built slightly higher. The base will be
level across the room.
This work was started just before Christmas 2004. I had the north wall
complete by the time the families arrived for the holidays. My Dad and I built
the west wall while they were in town. Over the next couple of weeks I managed
to complete a little work here and there. The big push came the week before our
LSR Mid-Year board meeting. A friend was coming up for the meeting (One of the
friends that talked me into stud wall benchwork) and wanted to check out my
progress. The room was a disaster area and there wasn't too much progress to
show off so I spent the week trying to get something accomplished.
There was benchwork up in parts of the room where I had started a
different version of the layout. Progress had stopped on that layout when I
finally decided that short of a duck-under I wasn't going to be able to do
staging the way I wanted. The benchwork has been a slow process since I'm not
able to have a cleared out room to work in. I'm moving things out of the way,
building the benchwork and moving things back. This has kept the process moving
at a snails pace but at least we are moving.
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