CSX Hanover Subdivision 3.0

[mu26aeh]

Few more ties covered this afternoon

[mu26aeh]

And a few more, few more ties and most of the black is now grey.  I tell ya, I know everyone has their own methods for doing things, but if you want to try to make ballast work a little easier, get yourself a bottle of Ballast Magic.  I love the stuff.  No more messy water/glue mixtures.

[GM50 4164]

The yard is really looking good Lee,  I mean Ed, I mean Adam!

[mu26aeh]

Work got in the way today, but did manage to cut some OSB to cover atop the storage cabinet.

[mu26aeh]

What do you do with a 24" tall and 44" wide helix that's not in use for the time being ?  Put it in the corner out of the way.  This may be temporary, or it may be permanent with a staging yard and track for continuous running during open house events, as our initial thought process ended with a point to point railroad.



No solid plans/drawings yet, so I'm just slinging benchwork blind for the time being, seeing what comes of it. First up is getting out of Lincoln yard heading towards Zarfoss Rd



This area hosts 4 industries to switch, Gordon Recycling and Frito Lay plants on the left, and Georgia Pacific and Kinard Warehousing on the right.



Finished up the night with some forest floor mix (ground foam colors and dried tea leaves) to camo the turnout throws.



Next up will be figuring out some track work for the Lehigh facility, since I'm pretty sure at this point it's going in the corner

[wazzou]

Not a criticism, but what is that ballast color?  It looks really, really light for a yard.

[mu26aeh]

Not a criticism, but what is that ballast color?  It looks really, really light for a yard.

It's Scenic Express Light Grey #50.  Lincoln is pretty light in color present day.  I do plan on "weathering" some areas with airbrush or rattle can so it's not quite as uniform

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9482567,-76.7757368,422m/data=!3m1!1e3

[mu26aeh]

Hoping to be slinging benchwork next week as I have a week off of work.  Was supposed to be off this week but my covered tested positive for something 🤔

[mu26aeh]

Slowly turning a corner

[mu26aeh]

I'm still making the corner, more like just spinning.  I think I've come to realization I can't just sling benchwork and see what works with this layout.  It's THE layout space I've always wanted since we moved into this house.  I want to get it right without having to get to a point and start over again.  @Ed Kapuscinski was over a while back and we roughly came up with an idea of what could be done but I'm not sure it's trying to fit 10 lbs of #$% in 5 lb bag.  The biggest issue I have is trying to make sure access is maintained to the electric panel, HVAC and water/well equipment. 

Wants:
York Sub, have Lincoln Yard installed already ( @wm3798 yard )  This is more or less on layout staging, or a terminal yard, nothing east of here
Spring Grove (PH Glatfelter paper mill), have this from last layout, will rebuild if needed
Other industries in between if room, no big deal if not. 
Porters Sideling
Smiths Siding ( YorkRail interchange )
Center St yard
Utz Foods
Vulcan Quarry (Bittinger)
Morton Buildings (if room)
DalTile
AgCom
Gettysburg & Northern Interchange
Horseshoe Curve/Jacks Mountain Tunnel
Specialty Granules/Grit Mill Blue Ridge Summit
Highfield (Maryland Midland Interchange)
Security-Holcium Cement
Hagerstown Yard
In the easterly direction of Porters, there really isn't anything left to serve, except for Suburban Propane and Emory Grove (eastern Maryland Midland interchange) and CSX is now requesting that be shut down.  But this trackage does have the rock runner loads east/empties west from Vulcan/Bittinger

Double deck is doable (done on the last version of the layout)

Sorry to cut short, but work break is over.  Wanted to get this out there, esp locals that know the area and what I'd like to get accomplished.  Besides, this is still a design discussion.  So lets hear some thoughts. 

I don't have a pic of basement dimensions here at work, I'll add later, or if @Ed Kapuscinski sees this he can upload a pic

[John]

I think I've come to realization I can't just sling benchwork and see what works with this layout. 

That was my mistake on the M&O .. just started building benchwork as I went along .. I'm too far into it now to do a specific locale / railroad without major surgery .. so spend more time planning, less time rebuilding ..

The biggest problem I see with MMID and Hanover is lack of trains - MMID has a couple of them a day - which is OK for a lone wolf, but what if you want to host 6 or 7 people .. but if you want to be true to your prototype, it's probably worth doing a realistic schedule with a smaller crew for proto ops, and have enough staging to do extra run throughs for larger ops sessions where you can keep a few more operators busy doing roundy roundy ...

Another option is have some specific scenes from hanover you listed, then add some additional options along the way .. progress and urban creep

[mu26aeh]

You did strike on one thing I was planning, and that's the schedule/hosting operators.  I like the fact this sub can be run by only a few people, solo if needed.  If I want a few guys (or gals ) over, great, plenty of work.  If I want to run a train after work ?  Can do that too. I was figuring Hagerstown yard operator, another for 795/797 (depending direction), stone train,  and YorkRail turn.  Can now add Lincoln Yard, though the YorkRail crew could do that too.  Was never thinking beyond 4-5 people.

[wm3798]

You're modeling a pretty lightly traveled piece of railroad here in the 21st century.  There's a reasonable limit to the amount of traffic that it HAS to support.
There's a dwindling number of shippers, but a couple of bulk commodity industries (paper and stone) that are paying most of the bills, so CSX will continue to humor the outfits that prefer rail to trucks.  So you've probably struck a good balance there.

The real question becomes, how much layout do you need to effectively model that?  The road traverses some magnificent countryside, so there's the opportunity for those few trains to really stretch their legs between active scenic vignettes, which I think is one of your priorities, so keep that sense of distance.  You also put your heart and soul into creating that space, so adding some run length will help get some return on that investment.

But keep in mind, as John has noted, and I learned from my layout, there's a break even point where the amount of work to build and maintain the layout begins to detract from the amount of time enjoying it.  But, if your design ultimately features a few more intensely modeled areas connected with some long, simple to wire, simple to maintain sections with little more than landform scenery, maintenance will be less of an issue, and construction of the negative space could be done on simpler, more narrow shelving, which would open up the room to more uses for your family when the trains aren't running.  (Valuable lesson learned from @seusscaboose .)

So seek balance.  I think you have an ideal operating scheme.  Scheduled trains showing up at the yard, and getting broken down into local traffic, and local traffic returning to the terminal so that can be hauled away by scheduled trains.  Operations with 1-5 crew is also more manageable than a layout that can't function without a cast of thousands.  Not everyone can be available on ops night, so the ones that can make it will have a pretty stress-free session to handle the couple of trains on the board.  With that in mind, if you want to have a bigger jam session, you could consider just running an open house style session like Todd Treaster does.  Set aside the switch lists for a night, stage a bunch of trains to just run, and everyone gets a turn.

Design the layout to be able to have continuous roundy round, even if you don't run your scheduled ops that way.  Give yourself some flexibility.  But don't build more than you can handle on your own.

Just my 2 cents.

Lee

[mu26aeh]

In other news, I have a Anycubic Photon Mono X on the way, I'll be able to keep up with Ed K printing scavenger hunt items to hide on others layouts 🤣

[PiperguyUMD]

In other news, I have a Anycubic Photon Mono X on the way, I'll be able to keep up with Ed K printing scavenger hunt items to hide on others layouts 🤣

I have a file for the bridge that goes in that horseshoe curve you were talking about