So it’s been awhile... we have been house hunting which has put an end to construction on the layout. It is a monolith and not movable so I haven’t bothered to advance it at all. In fact the potential move had me cleaning the layout to do some JFRTM solo ops to get some idea how successful or not this layout is/was. Some key take aways:
The almost eye height for me is awesome on the industrial switching areas, extremely immersive. In the yard, not so much. That said the yard is a large part of this layout and I am unsure if I will build a double ended yard (or have space to based on what homes we have seen).
It is a lot of layout for me. While I loved the idea on paper, the build and subsequent maintenance to get operational was quite a task, daunting even.
Vertical curves/transitions from mainline to Spurs, you think by now almost a decade and 8+ chain saw layouts I would have been able to get these right. Some are fine, some are too steep causing slippage/loss of traction. D’oh!
Backdrop.. no more Masonite next time. I don’t know how people keep them seamless, the room gets cold in the winter and my plaster cracked everywhere, tape be damned.
The yard design.. not having a way on to the main without a massive reverse move is rough.
I am at odds with what to do for the next layout if I have similar or less space, kind of hard to fit my interests in it in HO. I am thinking it would be roughly a small staging yard that feeds into a small town/terminal station for my passenger equipment and an interchange with a short line. The remainder of shelf would be an industrial branch for the short line. Granted I have time to work this out but my desire of a mainline and long passing siding to keep the commuter and freight separated may not work and I am kind of at odds with this decision as AFAIK no such arrangement existed in MBTA territory since its inception. Last time I tried a purely industrial switching layout I was unhappy to not have Atleast a back and forth area to run my passenger equipment.
For now I will operate the layout as is to hopefully learn more from this experience to put into the next. Less track is more. Less maintenance is good. Trying to strike a balance between yard Ops and a freight branch will take some figuring. I have never done yard Ops before this layout, and while I like it, it does eat up valuable decrepit branch space. Maybe the next layout will be 2 levels with a manual lift sort of elevator. Or maybe I will learn to make due with the space at hand. Model railroading is fun! (And can be extremely frustrating!!!)
