Update! Despite a snowstorm that wasn't suppose to amount to much, but ended up dumping 6-8" on us, Dave Foxx and Philip Hoffman braved the weather and helped me get some major pieces of the layout moved around.
All photos are by Dave, who realized that no one can photo shop his head into awkward situations if he's on the other side of the camera...
First we see the yard at it's original location, which was becoming more and more problematic because of the lack of decent west end staging, and the traffic patterns that were required because of that.
Next we see the corner next to the infamous closet, which is now inhabited by the new section. You'll notice the most important part of the project is already complete... That's right, I moved the beer fridge.
First we spent some time out in the very chilly garage constructing the new frame for the west end staging yard, which will be below decks from the Hagerstown yard. It will be 4 through tracks, plus about 4 or 5 stub end tracks for storing things like MOW equipment, the steam era collection, and other oddballs that won't typically be on the layout. Each track should be long enough to accommodate a 30+ car train. It will be accessed from the left via a yet to be built helix in the northwest corner of the room. We can all thank Dave for getting that fine shot of Phil.
Here's the new section with the existing yard platform set in place on top of it. I was hoping to avoid it, but it looks like I'm going to have substantially change the engine terminal area, since the relatively fragile round house sticks out into the aisle a bit more than I'm comfortable with. Here's a preliminary analysis of what I have in mind...
I'm thinking I'll rework the turntable into a 3' x 40" square that will extend into the corner. This would require either moving the existing roundhouse about 120 degrees around the turntable, or building the larger Hagerstown Roundhouse in that space and then some (as outlined in purple). This would free up the Elkins roundhouse to possibly be included in the new Elkins space, although the space there is quite limited.
Here's a look into the guts of the new section:
The west staging will be on the new 1/2" plywood deck that's right on top of the joists. It's a simple 4 track balloon, with a set of stub tracks. There's about 4.5" of clearance between the yard deck and the staging tracks, which is tight, but I'm pretty satisfied with how the other staging yard has performed, so I'm confident that as long as I exercise care in installing the track and turnouts, it should be relatively worry free. Just in case, there's soft fiberglass screen guard rails, and plenty of access from below.
The last thing we did was install a 12" x 5' long hollow core door (thanks, Dave!) to hold Elkins, which will for the most part be visible staging. This is set at a deck height of 50", and will be the end of a long continuous climb from Maryland Junction. Exactly how the Thomas Sub will curl around to reach this is yet to be determined, but with the additional two feet I'll be extending the peninsula, I'm sure I can make it work.
There's still plenty to do, but now, finally, the terminal points for the Western Maryland Western Lines are all in place. Given my notoriously slim budget, I anticipate at least a year's worth of work to connect all the dots, but I'm sure I'll scab in some temporary routes to keep some trains running in the meantime.
Thanks again to Phil and Dave for risking life and limb to give me a hand! (and some beer!) Haven't heard from either one of the, nor from the State Police, so I'm assuming everyone got home okay...
Last night I stayed up way too late moving trackwork from the Chaffee Branch over to the new Elkins shelf module. Once I'm done shoveling snow, I'll see if I can start getting it wired.
More news as it happens!
Lee
