DISCLAIMER

After working on my model railroad for 14 years, I had accumulated hundreds of photos of the railroad in the different phases of its creation. This section of the website is a sort of chronological explanation of the project, with some details on the challenges faced and solutions used. I do not mean to suggest that this is the only way to build a layout. What follows is the way I did it , with a lot of encouragement from my very understanding wife and advice from my friends in New York and Virginia, for better or worse. I have tried to date stamp the photos for an approximation of when each was taken, not necessarily when the work on the area was done.

I started this layout, my third, at the age of 60 and did not honestly know if I would live to finish it. My father only lived to the age of 60. I hope he would have been proud to see how his patience, guidance and love have inspired me in this project and in everything else in my life. I think he would have enjoyed seeing it.

Reusing prior layout sections

The first track work to be installed were two sections I had salvaged from my NY Layout: an engine terminal with roundhouse and a passenger staging yard. I kept these two sections because A: I had put a lot of effort into kit-bashing the turntable and roundhouse and B: The passenger staging area included a neat little village and trolley line.

Terra forming

There were a lot of elevation changes in the layout design. I decided to use the method my father had taught me in the 1950's ; the "cookie cutter " method of roadbed and terrain formation. Using a sandwich of 4 X 8 sheets of 1/2 inch "homosote" and 1/2 inch plywood, you lay them flat on the basic benchwork frame, draw your track plan on them while flat, and then use a saber saw to cut out sections that will be elevated above the baseline track level." Homosote" is a kind of dense cardboard that provides a sound deadening quality when running trains and is very easy to spike track into. It also provides an easy surface for carving in ground variation features such as ditches and puddles and is easy to pin trees and little plastic people into. Vertical wood risers bring the higher track bed up to the desired levels and are clamped and then screwed in place when everything is at the proper grades. This involves a lot of trail and error with a lot of clamps to get the grade changes smooth, but it goes much quicker than some other track bed construction methods, such as spline forming.

In the 1950's we used wire screening and plaster to form our mountains and land formations. Nowadays we have 2 inch thick blue or pink foam insulation to fill in our landforms. It's easy to cut and shape and fills in spaces nicely. It's easy to glue up into hillsides and mountains and cut into for tunnel portals, takes water based paint nicely and is very easy to stick trees into when the time comes. You can also apply plaster to it to smooth out contours and fill in gaps.

Here are some photos of the semi-finished layout in room 1 (2012)

Here are some photos of the semi-finished layout in room 2. (2016)

In room 4, I wanted to have a two level section of layout with a staging area on the lower level. Construction of the helix is described in a subsequent page of this site.

The first step in room 4 was laying out a full size paper plan on the floor. The exterior wall had already been sheet rocked and I had already built a wall between rooms 3 and 4 to keep the shop dust in my wood shop ( room 3). (A really nice feature, I thought, was a pocket door I installed separating these two rooms.) When the plan was finalized, benchwork was quickly built for the lower level, track was installed, wired and tested. I originally only intended for the lower level to be a storage area for rolling stock. It would have a reversing section and 6 long staging tracks. After I had built the helix and the upper level, I decided to add two more industrial switching locations and some extra Locomotive storage tracks. I had to work under the top deck! This was a royal pain. Don't do what I did! Get all your track work done on the lower level before you build your upper level!

A major drawback to the layout construction in room 4 was the breaker box against the outside wall. I wanted to build against the wall, but I still had to allow access to this box to turn off circuits for maintenance and repairs to the house electric supply. I resolved this by curving the track work just far enough away from the wall there to allow the box door to open. I cut a quarter circle hole out of the benchwork to allow the box door to swing completely open. Then I painted a mountain scene on the wall and the closed breaker box. Next I built a forested hillside against the wall extending well past the box on either side. This hillside is shaped from 2 inch solid foam insulation, painted and covered with "puffball" trees. In front of the breaker box and hillside is a removable sawmill structure with a wooden handle hidden inside one removable small building. The wooden handle is visible in the third photo. When I need to access the breaker box, I remove the small building, pick up the handle and the entire sawmill and mountain hillside section lifts off and away from the box door.

This is the track work that had been completed by 2012. A major addition was then added to room 3, Sawville, which will be described later. The left of the page shows the lower level track work in room 4.

Here are some detail photos of scenes in room 4 (2020)

Room 3

Around 2014, I moved my wood shop in room 3 up to the garage to allow more space for railroad expansion. This required some special planning because the hot water heater and heat pump equipment were in this room as well as a toilet and sink. This story is for another day.