10/29/2008

Rob Gould's EL Updated!

My basement is now back together now, after a new addition on my house caused a large section to be dismantled. EL 315 bringing a block of cars to the upper tracks for pick up of a road job. The road jobs travel around the dog bone swapping blocks of cars between several locations on the layout. Avery self adhesive stickers are color coded with two colors which represent the two "locations" that the blocks travel between. On my "pre-addition" layout every car had a sticker. This was quite arduous because the random nature in which I applied the stickers caused capacity problems at various locations at various times. Although it mirrors CP operations in the capital region and thus adds a touch of operational realism, the train movements became anything but standardized. Now I just put a matching sticker on each end of a block of cars.
At the other end of the layout we see the open staging area. The two trains toward the left are opposing movements to the two on the right. One of the layout "locations" is seen on the left. It is a three track stub ended yard representing Jersey City. So operationally a block of cars with a light blue/dark blue sticker on each end will travel from the Jersey City tracks to the C&O tracks and return in a subsequent session.
This photo shows the bulk of the layout that was dismantled for the construction of a new bathroom in the floor above. Contractors were able to kneel on the bench work while installing the plumbing. A friend & fellow model builder is kitbashing a huge Ford plant which will obscure the two trains you see here.

Three different ballasts can be seen representing the three railroads using the yard. Soil for EL, gray for PC and tan for C&O. The abandoned tower on the upper level obscures the hole in the wall for the loop on this end of the dogbone layout. Notice color sticker on top of the ICG car.

That's me and here you can see the new ballast at lower Cheshire yard. The C&O transfer run is coming in on the right from a two track, stub ended, hidden yard. The entire middle of my layout was dismantled last winter when we had an addition built to our home. Notice the plumbing access hatch in ceiling. Also notice crooked tangents in track work allow for an appearance closely following the practices of CP Rail in Albany and Saratoga, LOL.

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