Site Reset

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site and it’s time to basically start fresh with my updated thoughts on what I want to do. I have just returned from the NMRA 2009 Convention in Hartford where I met a lot of great people and picked up some good ideas from the layouts I saw.

New Years Resolution (Model Railroad Related)

I resolve to spend at minimum 10 hours working on things that will lead towards the successful creation and operation of my Reading Company Layout.

I also resolve to post a weekly wrap up of the activities that I have done which lead me towards the goal.

New Year 2009

Happy New Year to everyone out there which has been visiting my slow attempts at getting my layout built.

I have worked out a schedule that I plan to keep up in order to get something built up and running this year.

Here is the new planned schedule:

End of January – Finish Layout Plan, get reviews and improvements, and clean out and organize the junk that’s in the layout space.

February – Build the walls and wire the layout space.  Also install some sort of flooring system, maybe carpet or foam panels

March to June -Benchwork construction, and track work in some areas.

NMRA 2008 Convention Photos

I’ve dumped all of the photos I took in Anaheim up to my Google Picassa account here.

Getting Back on Track

Yes it’s been almost another month since my last post, I’ve been busy at work catching up with everything that I missed during the time that I was out for the NMRA convention and then my other travels since then.  I’m planning on spending most of my time this upcoming holiday weekend working on railroad related items, I’ve got a lot of stuff which I purchased in Anaheim to organize and figure out what needs to be done with it to get it ready.

On the track planning side of things, I’ve got a good idea of what i want to put in my Hershey track plan, I’ll be uploading that before the end of the weekend, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the Lebanon area of the layout since that’s what I need to look at planning out next.  I’ve never really seen a good yard diagram of the yard west of Lebanon, but I know it supported the local trains that ran along the line plus interchanging with the Pennsylvania Railroad and Cornwall Railroad (until 1964).

The other important item that I’ve been looking at is staging,  I’ve never liked any of my staging plans for the double deck layout that I am planning on building.  Because of the space that I’ve been looking at it was most likely that both of the yards would end up being stub ended yards, difficult to re-stage and almost impossible to just run a train non-stop when needed.  On the LDSIG tour in Anaheim I saw Bruce Morden’s HO scale Southern Pacific Santa Barbara Subdivision. Bruce is using the concept of X-factor staging which had first been mentioned in Model Railroad Planning 2004.  The idea is that the staging is arranged so that you can back a train into the staging once it has completed it’s run across the layout without interfering with the main line.  I’ll have to see if I can dig up a photo of what Bruce has there since I’ve been thinking about putting that into my plan to see how it fits.

Back from the Convention

Yes I’ve been back a week, but catching up with a lot of stuff at work as well as having to be out of town on business for part of the week has meant that I haven’t been able to update here as much as I wanted or will be able to do so in the future.

The NMRA convention was great, a number of interesting clinics, great layouts to visit and operate on.  I’ve picked up some good ideas that I want to look at including in my layout plan which will be posted soon.  I’ve been updating the Model Rail Cast forums with various details about the National Train Show, and will be dumping all of my photos there for everyone to view.

Other than that, I’m pretty close to meeting my timeline, I’ve got most of my thoughts on my layout design in my head, now I just need to get them down on paper, post them here, on the Model Rail Cast forums, as well as the LDSIG Wiki to get feedback from the plans and then start building.

Quick Update

Been a little too long since I’ve posted anything here so I figured I would give a quick update as to the status of my efforts.  I am still working on creating layout plans and operational schemes that I can get feedback on at the NMRA convention next week.

I’ve been starting with looking at the staging requirements for my layout under a couple various operation session plans

Plan 1 – 24 hour Operation Scheme
Plan 2 – 12 hour Operation Scheme, breaking the day into two segments
Plan 3 – 8 hour Operation Scheme

My overall goal is to create an operating session of approxiamelty 3 hours, so each of the plans would use a fast clock of some ratio.  There were a total of 18 scheduled Freight Trains (10 Westbound, 8 Eastbound) down the line during the time period which I am looking at, 9 of which made stops along the route.  And then there were the numerous local trains that transited parts of the line all adding up to a very busy stretch of railroad.

Model Rail Cast

Model Rail Cast is a weekly podcast hosted by Ryan Andersen and Will Ayerst.   It is definitely worth a listen each and every week.

I recorded a length segment with Ryan about the Reading Railroad, plans for my railroad and discussions of the LDSIG and OPSIG groups that I am involved in.   My segments are in shows #10 and #14.

Welcome

Welcome to my Train related blog where I will have post on my design and construction of my HO Scale Reading Railroad, photos from various layouts and museums I have visited, plus general railroad thoughs.