Tehachapi, BC

[Scottl]

The garage that houses Tehachapi BC is probably worth more on the market than my house...  Vancouver is world-class expensive.  Kind of funny considering it rains for five months each year 

[mark dance]

The garage that houses Tehachapi BC is probably worth more on the market than my house...  Vancouver is world-class expensive.  Kind of funny considering it rains for five months each year 

Vancouver is second to Hong Kong in the category of "least affordable city in the world"...unfortunately

[John]

Vancouver is second to Hong Kong in the category of "least affordable city in the world"...unfortunately

which is interesting .. considering you are surrounded by woods and mountains ..

[mark dance]

which is interesting .. considering you are surrounded by woods and mountains ..

Part of the attraction. Same as Hong Kong.

Affordability is cost/income. High living costs and relatively low incomes. I think I read somewhere that 80% of locals' net income goes to housing now.

Another issue is relative lack of developable land. The restricted geography has created the third densist downtown in North America after Manhattan and San Francisco.

<end social studies lesson>

Md

[GaryHinshaw]

Prices are due to a combination of geography and demographics: very little developable land near the urban core, and relatively high immigration rates from the Pacific Rim.  This aerial shot looking north towards downtown (front and centre) and beyond illustrates the geography quite well:



Active development abruptly ends about 5 miles north of town as you quickly reach the Coast Range mountains that extend all the way to Alaska.  To the west (left) is water, so new growth is largely to the south and east.   (This shot also gives you a good idea of why the Canucks team colours are blue, green, and white.)

Development in our area (just off to the left of this shot) is height-restricted, so the most common form of housing is strata duplexes.  We share a building and lot with another family, which makes things almost affordable.  Our dwelling is quite modest (~1500 sqft of living area on 3 stories, not counting the garage), but our location is fantastic.  You'll have to pry us away from here. 

So Gary - did you pick up any insights during Vanrail that will shape current or future work on the Tehachapi?

Not so much from Vanrail proper, but from operating on local area layouts over the past few years, especially Mark's C&W, which has been a very influential experience (though TBC is a very different style of layout).  My focus at this stage is to do as much as I can to make ops potentially interesting while sticking to the spirit of the prototype.  I want the layout to hold interest for more than just the time it takes to build it.  Not sure yet if I'll succeed, but I'm sure trying.

[mark dance]

That is very interesting...how has the local Vancouver ops environment changed your thinking and objectives for TBC specifically Gary?  That might make a good addition to your clinic at the upcoming Trains 2015 show!

Md

[Santa Fe Guy]

We are now facing the same house price issues here in Melbourne. Currently the medium house price is $700.000K. In our area houses and land we paid 50.000K for 30 years ago are now hitting a Mill. We are gaining 1000 people a week coming to live in Melbourne. I'm not sure how our grandchildren will get on in another 12 plus years.

[GaryHinshaw]

That is very interesting...how has the local Vancouver ops environment changed your thinking and objectives for TBC specifically Gary?  That might make a good addition to your clinic at the upcoming Trains 2015 show!

Spoken like a true clinic organizer.   The answer might not be so interesting though.  Before I moved to BC, my hobby focus was on N scale modeling as I had relatively little contact with the ops world in the DC area and I didn't really appreciate its attractions.  When I came to Vancouver I was quickly exposed to the local ops scene -- largely thanks to you -- and it truly changed my thinking about the value of ops and what holds long-term interest in a layout.   The human-machine and human-human interactions that occur during an ops session on a well-designed layout are truly unique and enjoyable.  This is well-known among seasoned operators, but I had yet to experience it myself.

Fortunately that exposure came early enough to influence the design of TBC, as the first few dozen pages of this thread document.  Some specific examples of that influence:

* I made sure to plan enough aisle space to accomodate 5-6 operators moving about.  If I didn't think a crew of that size was desirable and/or readily available (or that HO guys would deign to operate an N scale layout...), I would have crammed more layout into the space, and it would have been very diffucult to reconfigure it later to be more ops friendly.

* I tried to think through the traffic levels required to support the crew size.  This dictated a certain minimum mainline run and adequate staging capacity.  My real estate constraints then dictated stacking.

* I'm trying to generate enough job variety to sustain a crew's interest over repeated sessions.  Examples: emphasize pusher/dpu operations with the through freights; retain as many online car spots as possibe, consistent with the prototype; generate events that throw a wrench in the machine: e.g bad-order set-outs and sweepers on the hill, track & time requests that pull certain track segments out of service for a while, and so forth.

* I'm trying to plan intermediate build milestones that allow us to test aspects of the ops concepts as we go, and make mid-course corrections, if necessary.

Of course I still maintain a keen interest in N scale modeling, but that has necessarily taken a back seat to infrastructure for quite some time now. 

-gfh

P.S. Rod, I hear similar stories about Sydney real estate.

[James Costello]

P.S. Rod, I hear similar stories about Sydney real estate.

Lots of talk here about "housing bubble" prices in Sydney and Melbourne, thankfully not so much up here in Paradise aka Brisbane / Gold Coast 

[C855B]

Lots of talk here about "housing bubble" prices in Sydney and Melbourne, thankfully not so much up here in Paradise aka Brisbane / Gold Coast 

Yeah, R & I were seriously working on possibly moving there 25 years ago... even subscribed to the Sydney newspaper, mailed to us in Atlanta. In 1990, housing around Sydney was already very expensive, and mortgage rates then were in the 18-21% range and not improving. We abandoned that plan, shaking our heads in wonder at how you folks down there manage it.

[Van Horne]

Gary, you are right that that picture illustrates the geography well, but it is, I am going to guess, shortly post-Expo 86 - maybe 26 or 27 years old.  On the other hand, that may have been the last clear day . . .

Dave (North Vancouver)

[mark dance]

Gary, you are right that that picture illustrates the geography well, but it is, I am going to guess, shortly post-Expo 86 - maybe 26 or 27 years old.  On the other hand, that may have been the last clear day . . .

Dave (North Vancouver)

...he writes after 6 months of above average temperatures, clear days and record low water levels...  and unfortunately the province has he forest fire scars to prove it.

md

[davefoxx]

Cool!  Right smack dab in the middle of that picture on the far side of Vancouver Harbour is this:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Burnaby,+BC,+Canada/@49.3116944,-123.1157777,1077m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x548677a8219c8373:0xdd0a72738752b169!6m1!1e1

A railroad even I could model.   

DFF

[Scottl]

That sulphur unload is pretty cool, as is the entire waterfront.  Someday I will get down there again and check it out.  It would be great fodder for a layout.

ps, not sure why Bing had that as Burnaby, it is clearly North Van.

[wcfn100]

ps, not sure why Bing had that as Burnaby, it is clearly North Van.

It's not calling it Burnaby, it just keeps the original search info even after you start moving around.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Las+Vegas,+NV/@49.3119666,-123.1166918,667m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x80beb782a4f57dd1:0x3accd5e6d5b379a3!6m1!1e1

Jason