B&M Fitchburg Division Planning

[garethashenden]

Getting rid of the peninsula we can go around the room on 18" wide baseboards, except for Gardner which gets 24" for the yard. We are also now looking south, as opposed to north. The whole thing got turned inside out. This gives me space to model a bit of the Heywood branch in Gardner. Its not fully defined yet, but gives some industrial switching. There's staging problem in that there isn't any. A lower level for staging makes sense in a way, but I'm not entirely sure how to incorporate it. Again, still learning the software so there's some weirdness as a result of that. Its also set as Atlas code 55 track, all the turnouts will be handlaid when I actually construct it, so things should flow better.



Thoughts?

[garethashenden]

Version 3. If I were to sacrifice Athol, I could replace it with an eight track staging yard. I've also added more switching opportunities in Gardner, more excuses for mill buildings is always good in my opinion. Thoughts?

[packers#1]

Interesting change, but that staging yard takes up a lot of space. Operationally, are you trying to be able to model trains moving over the line interacting with each other, or is it more railfanning focused with some occasional switching? Because I think it really matters as to how much staging you need and what the trade off would be for railfanning space.  Could you add a couple smaller stub yards in the background instead?

[MDW]

I like this idea.....I've seen many well executed examples of sneaking a bit of staging - continuous or not - around the back the layout.   It means shortening the actual modeled scene depth and designing a way to hide the staging but it may be a good compromise to allow you to keep a longer mainline run - if that’s a priority.

Good luck!
Michel

[garethashenden]

There isn't a whole lot of online switching in this section of railroad. So most of the activity would be through freights. In particular the challenge is the single track section in the middle. I have imagined that I would have trains made up in the staging yard and run them as needed without breaking them down/setting them up between sessions. I think that that leads me to want more staging, as four trains in each direction isn't actually that much variety. Gardner was still big enough in this era to have its own switcher. Whether I can find enough space to keep it busy remains to be seen...