Chicago Crossing

[u18b]

Welcome to the Railwire, Eric.

I enjoyed your layout.

[mu26aeh]

@Ed Kapuscinski , you're wanted in aisle 6.  Please bring your own mop and bucket.  @ChicagoCrossingMRR has joined our people

[ChicagoCrossingMRR]

@u18b Thanks for the welcome Ron, appreciate you dropping by the channel too.

[Philip H]

@ChicagoCrossingMRR I'll pile on . . . You are doing really great micro scene stuff. Like @DKS (That's David K. Smith) worthy.  its been a blast to be one of your subscribers, and I can't wait to see what you add here.

[dnhouston]

@ChicagoCrossingMRR I'll jump on this train (pun intended) as well.  Awesome work on your channel, and I can't wait to see what you post here.

[chuck geiger]

I have been following for a while now and did a feature on his layout on my channel. He is the N scale Boomer Dioramas.

[chuck geiger]

Also Fulton Road by Daniel Aguilera

[wm3798]

I used the urban underpass trick on mine.


But now I have to re-think that as I've added a wye junction at that spot and the main street Merchant's Row has been displaced...


Really cool layout, Eric.  Thanks for joining us.
Lee

[Chris333]

The thumbnail of the video looks like this I took yesterday at a plant that used to make hot metal cars.

[nscaler711]

I used the urban underpass trick on mine.

But now I have to re-think that as I've added a wye junction at that spot and the main street Merchant's Row has been displaced...


Really cool layout, Eric.  Thanks for joining us.
Lee

I'll be honest. I'm not sold on this last image, I wonder if you could keep the street and merchants row, but as flats and utilize a street running operation?
Like La Grange KY? granted they don't have tracks going underneath the town... but it looks like you are extending the layout and I'm wondering if you could have had added tracks to the lower section so trains would be hidden from view until arriving on to the original layout? Again I cant see everything, so I'm not sure if that just goes into hidden staging anyway.

As far as @ChicagoCrossingMRR layout goes, It looks amazing, outside of the random hill and tunnel  I wondered why something like a overpass or even a larger structure couldnt have been used to hide that section when Chicago is littered with view blocks. But I see now thanks to your explanation.

[John]

Tunnel clearance isn't normally 10-15 higher than the cars ..

[ChicagoCrossingMRR]

@nscaler711 ultimately we just have to decide how much to rework and what to rework that provides the most benefit to ourselves as hobbyists. These days I mostly ignore that hill and it doesn't bother me much, even with the evident irony created by how deeply I'll go into specific Chicago details elsewhere on the layout.

Because that structure isn't particularly high and pulling it off the layout doesn't appeal strongly to me, I may simply put in some cosmetic changes that reframe it as an earthen embankment with an abandoned right of way on top. In the timeframe of the layout, there was already substantial abandoned above-grade right-of-way on both the north and south sides of the city.

Cheers!

Eric

[ChicagoCrossingMRR]

@dnhouston @Philip H thank you both for the kind welcome!

@chuck geiger that was awesome of you to feature CCMR in your top layouts of the year BTW. Thank you! Maybe in a couple of decades I'll get where Boomer is. That guy knows his stuff and really elevates the hobby.

[ChicagoCrossingMRR]

@wm3798 if I were to have done things over again I might have thought to re-structure the left side of my layout to have a larger elevated section that looks like your photo with the underpass. It's a really nice and plausible solution to put some cover on the track and get some more square inchage for an urban built-up setting.

Thank you for sharing that idea Lee -

Eric

[basementcalling]

@ChicagoCrossingMRR glad to see you found the weird corner of the universe that is TRW. Really enjoy your videos and what you have done on your layout.