This week I was cleaning out some of the stuff my wife and I have accumulated over our 75+ years. Opening a box I found about 4 dozen DVD backup disks from old computers. Going through the files on the disks I found some photos of my first N Scale layout from the 2000-2005 era that I thought had been lost. In 2000 I had met my now longtime close friend Justin at the NMRA St. Louis convention and we enjoyed some long chats about the benefits of N Scale. I left the HO club I had been a member of for over 30 years and started on my first N Scale layout. I had always been a Pennsy modeler and a fan of the Horseshoe Curve and had tried to model it unsuccessfully in HO. I decided my first foray into N Scale would be to attempt to model the Horseshoe Curve. I had posted a couple of photos of this first layout around 2008 or so in my PRR Allegheny Division thread, which was my 2nd Horseshoe Curve layout but they were lost when Photo Bucket went from free to fee based. I thought all the photos of that layout were gone so I was delighted to find these and thought I would share them. The important thing about this layout was that it showed me what N Scale could accomplish and that it could operate as reliably as HO. I was sold and so was my HO equipment. It is still a little hard to believe that it's almost 20 years ago that I tore this layout down.
The Curve was 10 ft wide by 12 ft long and was fully enclosed with a pop up in the middle for access. That design decision enhanced the scenic quality of the Curve but proved to be such a PIA that it led to the eventual decision to tear it down and build Horseshoe Curve version 2, the PRR Allegheny Division. This 1st version of the Curve was completed in time for the NMRA National Convention in Toronto in 2003 and was on the layout tour. The remainder of the layout had operating trackwork but was bare plywood with no scenery. The Conrail photo was used as part of the advertising for the NMRA National Convention layout tour. You can see the difference when photo lights are used to light a scene. At the time I was undecided on whether to model the PRR years or the Conrail years and had equipment for both.
The HO Club I belonged to used the CTC64 Command Control System. My home HO layout had used the Onboard Command Control System. I had unsuccessfully tried to get the club to convert to the new Digitrax system and so when I built this N Scale layout it was Digitrax from the get go. I still have the ER Models Sharks seen in the photo below and they still have their decoders installed. These days the decoders are probably worth more than the locos.
This photo with the Conrail units was used in the advertising for the convention.
This photo looks down the valley from behind the Curve. An upbound coal train and a downbound passenger are about to pass. There were no super trees then. Lichen, puff balls, and weeds covered in foam were the trees of the day.
In this view we can see the gift shop and the parking lot the roadway and the sluiceway running down to the reservoir.
In this final upbound shot we can see the just see the reservoir on the left side of the picture.
