020 - Richlawn RR v2 - Back to Pizza and Beer

Rick has decided to continue his old and unhealthy ways and to not put the layout on a diet.  Fair enough.  So we'll flip back to drawing v.1041 and proceed with the necessary modifications.  To me, this is the fun part.  Anyone can draw a mainline.  That's easy.  The tweeking to make it look like a railroad is where the art is.

First off, let's go back to the end of December and put the closet in the drawing.  Somehow I missed this email, so we'll work on it now.

Here is the plan as it stands now.  Tweaking time!

 Dimensions for the Guestroom Closet - 7' 7" width inside by 23 1/2" depth inside.

 Hey!  What a nice surprise!  The closet is longer than estimated, so we get some extra track.  While the temptation is to shove more track into the closet, I figure Rick's wife might actually need to use it some.  Most likely Rick will operate his layout on his own, so four staged trains is a lot.  He can add more later if he likes.

 Let's finish the staging area properly.  First, you ALWAYS have rerailer tracks at the mouth of the yard at minimum.  Rick may be backing trains into this yard blindly or with a remote camera, so you want them to stay on the track.  We also want to put bumpers on the end to help protect the cars.  These additions are cheap insurance using Atlas code 83 track components.  

 I put it all on an unfinished shelf, though I'm sure Rick will put scenery on it anyway.  My thought is that one day, on a busy ops session, he might....just might...take a lesson from the Amazing Lee Nicholas and turn this into a live "mole" staging area.  Wow!  A lot more trains.

Palmer Industries is a focal point on the layout.  Rick is going to kitbash the front building of Palmer along with the chimney to give it the flavor of the entire factory.

To do this he is going to use two of the Walther's Cornerston Series Empire Gas Works plants.  The footprint for one building is 16 1/2" long by 7 7/8" wide.  When you put the two side by side it will be 33" long!  That is a big building for this layout.

We'll start by switching to the Structures layer, and making a rectangle the size of one of the structures.

Then we'll click and double it, butting them up to each other.

 Here you can see how bit the building, and the newly added chimney look, just sitting in the aisle.  Oh boy.

Even after removing some sidings, this is a big structure.  We'll need to move the siding a bit and squeeze it in.

After moving the siding by using an 18" inch radius curve, and also extending the right side of the blob just a bit, we squeezed it in.  I added the road that runs in front and the chimney.  Prototypically the chimney should be closer to the aisle, but an elbow would take it out the first operating session, so I moved it the magic 6" in to protect it.  Still, Rick may want to turn this whole structure around so that you can see the front, but when people walk in their eye will follow the road.  Rick's choice.

Both Rick and I had noticed that the swing gate could line up with the East Louisville main, and we thought "what if?"   Neither Rick or I like to leave things alone, so we're wondering if a Gate Switch or Gate Extension might be plausible, and fun.  By locking the gate open, you could extend the lead on the industrial section.  I went ahead and drew it in, and we'll let Rick figure out how to make it work.  Stay tuned, Model Railroad Hobbyist fans!

We need to service the diesel fleet, and I'm running out of space.  Our thought was to use the area inside the wye, which is actually common.  But later I thought it was too confining, and I'd like to see some scenery there to hide the opening into the closet.  So let's squeeze two tracks along the back wall, and at a slight angle.  Never put a track parallele to the back wall if you can help it.

Ok, I forgot about a caboose track.  Rick and I decided since the railroad was running out of real estate  the cassette draw track would be the caboose track.

 Buck and Loretta have decided to move their trailer to West Louisville, so I will draw that in.  Above is the scenery section we need to drop in.

And magically it appears!  Glad I did that because I had the curve at the wrong radius.  The dirt road to their house continues on over the tracks.

 There!  I sent the plan over to Rick to run and play with it.  We'll meet again and fine tune the rest of the industries.