Last night I started doodling around with a track plan for the new layout.  I discovered that I can take my existing benchwork modules and arrange them to fit this exact plan.  So another “Yippie!” for this plan. I mainly started working on trying determine the needed radius on the track.  I have most everything situated excepted for the right  section, and the upper industry spur (near the orange car shop).  But so far it’s coming along nicely I think.

I’ve also been thinking about the layout’s location.  I do like the valley side with the tunnels, but would like it to be a little more green.  I couldn’t really move it to a real southern location because it’s pretty flat here with no tunnels, and keeping the tunnels might be a requirement as they act as a good scene divider on that side of the layout. The same goes for the industry side; something a little more urban/just-outside-of-town scene, rather than a rocky desert scene.

So I’m going to toss on my Freelance hat and call the layout the Union Pacific Elmwood Route and use some of the old layout info for it’s background.

Here’s a look at what the plan looks like so far:

Shaun Track plan

Here’s the latest track plan for the new layout.  As previously mentioned, I ended up miscalculating my room’s length, so I had to tweak the plan to fit the correct size.  At the moment, I have the river and BLMA bridge removed from the layout, but I think I can shorten the siding a bit at the bottom to fit in a little water way to go under the track and road. I thinking maybe a concrete lined drainage canal perhaps rather than your usual slopey, tree lined river.  We’ll see.

Otherwise, not much progress on the benchwork.  I need to pick up two sheets of plywood from Lowes, and I have my Micro Engineering track on order.  Once I get all that in, I can begin mocking up the track work on the benchtop to see how this all looks in real life.

Shaun Track plan

Wasn’t crazy about the last new theme, so I switched to a new theme

Also, if you happen to visit the site on an iPhone, you’ll be presented with a new iPhone app-style interface for navigating the site. I think it’s a pretty neat little interface.

In railroad news, my benchwork is enroute and due to be delivered tomorrow (the 9th). Yay!

I also discovered I mis-measured my room’s length’s by about a foot, so some layout changes had to occur.  I’m looking at dropping the secondary storage track because I won’t have enough space for the loop grade I had (and also simply to keep the railroad contained in itself), and maybe dropping the bridge/river crossing depending how long I want my siding. Once I get the track plan updated I’ll post that.

Shaun Benchwork, General, Track plan

So here’s the first plan I put together for the office layout.

The guest bed would be the big dark blue box, the desk the black box.  The black area at the very lower left are walls.

So we have a single level track plan. a dogbone I believe you would call it almost.  The back 8″ of the layout is space for 4 staging yards. Since I still had the desk wall, I added in a 3 additional shorter staging tracks there as well being the monitors.  The 2% grade loop will drop the track to this mini yard.

I opted to keep the scene the town scene of Elmwood. I have 2 small industry spurs, as well at the larger Superior Paper Mill spur.  In case I want dom some switching, I’ll have some spurs for it.

The scene is just long enough for me to have 100″ mainline and siding for meets. The staging can hold trains up 127″, so I can run a really long one through if I wanted while keeping a shorter on the siding.

As much as I’ll miss at the different parts of the soon to be “Old Layout”, having this smaller one scene kind of layout is kinda nice. I’m be able to dedicated time & effort to really working on this one section (which be the entire layout) as opposed to multiple ones, ya know.  It’s hard to explain. Like I won’t feel so overwhelmed by having such large layout.  The long runs are great, but all the scenery work….oy!

In order to keep the design and the work simple, I don’t think I’m going to do a double deck.  So my double track helix will eventually go on sale once it’s removed.

While it’s sad to see the old layout go, I’m actually kind of excited to get to work on this new smaller one.

Shaun Track plan