Two years?

Yeah, two years since I've posted. Not really surprised, this seems to be the way it is with me and model railroading.

The biggest life event in the past months has been moving out of our 3 bedroom house (with a garage) into a 2 bedroom apartment. This does not bode well for model railroad projects. But it's also not the end of the world.

I actually have a beginner level NCE DCC system. Two locomotives and some rolling stock mostly that came from ebay. Got a little bit of track. I might actually have a running, very small, layout at some point in the next few months.

It will mostly be a learning experience for me, and less of a long term solution for operations. I still want my full scale rail/marine set up... but it's going to require more creativity now than it once would have.

Two more years before my next post... I'll try not to.

Small Scale?

So I've been worried for a while that I'm over reaching with my "first" project. Brain wave tonight to use Erie / Lakawana's 25th St. / South Bronx terminal. It was a small car float receiving off line terminal that primarily served a coal dealer (for heating homes). It's a long narrow layout, fairly simple in design but still complex enough that it looks fun to operate. And it would probably fit on 2 or 3 hollow core doors. I could uses a (non-Erie) car float set up that would transfer just fine to my larger project.  Might make a good start.

Will consider...

The Train's a little delayed

Wow... um yeah 6 months(ish) since my last post. Goodness.

Still thinking about the project, but not much tangable work has gone into it lately. Got an Athern MP15, unpainted, for christmas, and some money for a DCC system. Still thinking about Digitrax as my primary, but will do more research before the greenbacks cross the counter (as it were).

I need to work on getting my layout space cleared out and fixed up. That, at the moment, is the single biggest holdup. And as with all things, real life is in the way.

The project is still a go... the only question remains how long to motivate myself to "go!"?

Land locked staging or lack there of

Played around a little with a lift out connection from staging yard to layout. It would work, might be interesting, but really just doing thought experiments with how it would operate, I'm just not as interested in it as in a car float operation. It did inspire me ot make some changes to where the float bridge was set up and change around the sorting yard and such. All of which I think are improvements. I haven't abandoned the idea of more traditional staging yet, but really I think I'm happier with a float operation.

Second thoughts V2

So over the past few days I've been playing around with the basement (version 2) layout of the PHI. I've got it down to something I'm starting to really like. There are some interesting restrictions mostly having to do with how many curves the "mainline" has to take, and it's forced me to make some compromises, but all in all I'm very happy with how it's going.

I did have a rash of second thoughts this afternoon. Mostly having to do with car floating. I was thinking that so long as I didn't mind a long lift out section, I could simply have a land locked staging yard. And I'll admit there is some appeal to that idea. It would certainly turn down the level of some of the challenges I've set myself, modeling the car floats being the big one.

I also had a second second thought, and that was that I could simply do away with the staging yard all together (which is less than ideal due to the shape I shoehorned it into, and simply have several car floats that just sit on shelves with their rolling stock and that's how staging is handled. This is a distinct possiblity, but it also bothers me some how. I really like the idea of having them "dock" at the other end and being able to re-sort the cars there. quite honestly, I probably have plenty of space, and don't need the staging yard space for industry switching, so I probably won't go with that idea.

However the idea of a traditional staging yard and some form of lift out interchange track rather than the car float set up does have some significant appeal. It does however mess up my whole history for the PHI, and really I am very interested in modeling a car float operation... or actually in operating a car float operation. Still... it's rolling around in the back of my mind. I'll have to sleep on it.

I had a thought

Had an interesting thought the other night as I was going to bed thinking about ideas for industries and such on the new and improve PHI. Basically what I'm building is a rail serviced industrial park that uses car floats. And really... I'm ok with that. Yes it's completely outside the bounds of realism, but you know what I can rationalize most all of it, so I'm good. I get what I want. Lots of tight industrial switching, and a car float.

argh my brain

I have a basic bench work design, and a "main line" track plan for my "new" basement space. It's quite a bit bigger, and there can almost be some real train action if the switching crew has to go from the yard to the far flung industries on the opposite (east) end of the layout.

One concern so far is staging space. I'm using some difficult to get to wall space on the opposit side of the room as a staging yard that could be "on camera". The link between the two will be the car floats. Its kind of a short space though, so I had to cram a little to get suitable room for cars, and a switching lead long enough to work the yard. Even as it is with curved turnouts and some weird arranging, I'm not sure it'll be enough space, and I know I'll want the switch lead to be longer in the end. I'm considering doing some sort of hinged thing that comes down to extend the switch lead in front of a door, but that may be beyond the limits of my modeling to start. We'll see.

Now my problem is that my creativity seems to have fled. I'm got lots of space for industries but no idea what to put in them. There's a fair amount of wall space for backdrop industries as well as a good number of places for full fleged modeling. I have my industry list from verion 1 of the PHI, but I'm just not sure where to put them all. I'm kinda afraid I'm gonna end up with a bunch of straight sidings which is fine for generating trafic, but I do want it to be somewhat interesting. I've already had to abandon on cute piece of tight trackwork I liked. I just don't think I'm gonna find a place for it. I'll keep working on it, and hope my creativity returns. I really don't just wana slap industries down just to generate car loads, I'd like to have it make some kind of sense. It's just a matter of rationalizing it in my head I guess. My best bet is probably to place all the old industries I had thought up for the last version of this, and see where that leaves me.

I'll probably take a day or two away from the planning software just to think a little. Maybe re-fire the creative juices.