Single or double

[ljudice]

re: "just in case"

This has happened here in NJ on the old Lehigh Valley parts of which were just re-doubletracked. 

I've always liked the look of the open single tracked main.  The oddity here was that the line was (until NS took over) single track to the Musconetcong (Pattenburg) Tunnel - which remained doubletrack.  I could never understand this until I had dinner with a CR manager who explained that with CR owning two other stack routes into the NJ area, it could afford to keep the Lehigh Line single stack - and keep CP Rail (D&H) who had trackage rights from landing stack trains in the NY Terminal.

So some interesting stuff can happen in the single/double situation...

[MichaelWinicki]

Looks a bit pristine for an abandoned second track. Needs more weeds (possibly with some nice tire lanes caused by maintenance vehicles using the old roadbed as a convenient access roadway. The ballast on the removed track should look older and dirtier than the (actually maintained) ballast on the remaining track.

You're right Chris, it does need to be "nastier" looking.  That will be the project for next year. 

[Ian MacMillan]

Brian,
I would go single track, but the double tracks ties still in place,with some rail here and there. Nice typical B&M rip up. Hotness

[billincarmel]

Several years ago I took the advice that I read to only use a single main on my layout. I hated it with a passion and it is one of the reasons it no longer is in existence. If you are operations oriented, go single main. If you just like to run and watch your trains then strongly consider double mains. I operated by myself and wanted to run multiple trains without much haggle and could not do so with the single main. Let me clarify that I was not modeling specific protoypes and, most clearly, was not a rivet counter. Do what will make it fun for you.

[Bsklarski]

By no means am I a rivet counter. Im trying to model what I have never seen model before. funny you say that, I remember at an IPMS contest one, a younger guy was NOT alive during WW2, was in a heated talk with a much older man, who worked at Hamilton Standard building propellers for WW2 bombers. He was trying to tell the older man about them and the guy kept saying that it was not true, as he built them LOL.