I Melt With You

[tracker7]

Left work early tonight;  was owed some time from last week;  expect to balance things out before Thursday night.

Worked on the railroad again tonight.  Laid down some more track (a big curving spur leading to what will be a coal mine).  For those playing at home, the basic plan for this little project is Atlas's #11006 layout, seen here.  The outer loop has been lengthened somewhat, and the aforementioned spur comes off of the existing spur at the top of the image.  My showpiece locomotives, Atlas SD50s and SD60s, have some trouble navigating the switch mechanisms because of their fuel tanks, so they'll stay on the outer loop and its spurs.  My good ol' SD9, F7, and C30-7 and Dash 8-40CW will handle the switching/"local" work on the inner loop and it's little starburst of spurs.

It's wired simply right now - the two loops are electrically isolated from one another, and that's it.  No scenery at all, just track on the door serving as a layout table.  I'm planning to practice my wiring-fu by setting up each spur as electrically independent, so I can store locomotives here and there, and maybe get really ambitious and have a locomotive more-or-less permanently assigned to the mine.

Scenery plans are somewhat nebulous.  A small town inside the loops, with small industries on the spurs.  Mountainsides (Appalachian, of course) along the long side, and some kind of scenic divider between the town and the mine.  A mountain ridge would be nifty, and appropriate, but I could also go for a river, as, well, bridges look good.  Could get away with both by building a reasonably steep grade leading to the mine, with the spur line crossing a river on its way to the mine.

Time to check some catalogs for bridges and whatnot.  Hm.  Could have the line cross a bridge and immediately enter a tunnel on the way to the mine.  Works well enough on the West Virginia/Maryland border.

Comments

[tracker7.livejournal.com]

The most recent shift in my work schedule has allowed me to get out to the working meetings of the local National Model Railroad Association chapter. They've got a large N-scale setup at Turfland Mall, and seeing an operating layout on a regular basis has been a push to getting some use out of the sizable collection of cars and locomotives I have.