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...
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
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!"?
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!"?
Sunday, January 2, 2011
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 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.
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