Back in the early 90's I tried my first model railroad, an HO scale Southern Pacific. It was going to be a loop with a switch industry in the middle. I bashed a small baseboard together, put a small radius loop on it, bought some kind of double track, 4-way, super crossover, and wondered why the 6-axle diesel wouldn't take the turns.
I was young and impatient, the kit was sold.
In the 1995 July edition of Railroad Model Craftsman, there was an article called Modelling the Sandersville Railroad. Inspired, I decided my mistake was HO scale and I promptly went and brought a 6-axle Norfolk Southern Dash 8, a GP38-2, a 9 3/4' complete curve, flextrack, and built two small baseboards. Amazingly the Dash 8 loco could make the turn, but I moved around a lot so the baseboards were used for storing wargames figures.
I was still young and impatient, in 2000 the kit went into a box and there it stayed... until now.
Trying to think of something to do with our 8-year-old over the summer holidays, while mum was working, I naively decided to break open the box and have another go. The goal was to get two double loops going using DC and Cab Control before school started.
School started yesterday and though the baseboard is finished, no track has been laid, although another Dash 8 showed up at Xmas which was awesome.
I entirely underestimated the whole process - because I am now old and impatient.
But I must have mellowed somewhat because this time, the kit is not going back in the box.
Pre-Planning - What the Layout Needed to Do
The first thing to do was to check what still worked, so we got a wargames board and put a test track down.
Amazingly the two cheapo controllers still controlled and both locos still went choof-choof around the loop. Success! I went and bought a compass, some gridded paper and got down to planning a proper layout.
The first design was pretty much what you'd expect. Classic 4x8 (or 1.2m by 2.4m for metric fans), double loop. I showed my wife and she said, for the record, "That isn't going to be very exciting and isn't it meant to have a hole in the middle where you sit?"
Yes, my wonderful wife basically said "make your layout bigger", so I did. And as things progressed, it really got me thinking about what we needed the layout to do. So here are the practical, kinda prototypical guidelines I came up with. The railroad needed:
- to cater for an 8-year-old ability which would grow over time
- to cater for my 50-year-old ability and impatient need to build the entire railroad
- the Sandersville main line interchange with Norfolk Southern at Tennille
- a bit of NS main line/continuous running
- a representation of the Sandersville short line and industries
- to use what we already had
- the whole thing had to be able to be taken down and stored in the garage(!!!)
- minimal soldering and simple electronics (added post-design after reading about model RR electronics)
Using the guidelines, various iterations have resulted in an 11'x5'(ish) or 3.6m x 1.6m with an operating hole in the middle, two outer loops and space for Sandersville RR to meander around the middle. This resulted in most of the track and all of the turnouts being within arms reach.
I also decided on the layout having two modes. Quasi-Prototypical mode for grown ups to play trains and Toy-mode for 8-year-old awesomeness.
In Toy-Mode, the loops will function as 'continuous running' fun. In Proto-Mode, the inner loop will serve as the Arrivals/Departure track and leads for the Tennille yards. There has been multiple iterations of a design which I'll cover in a later blog.
So there you go, after twenty years and two months, the baseboard is built, the layout design is finalised (mostly), and I'm waiting on international shipping to deliver some track; Sandersville here we come!
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