Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Update - Ripping up track and re-laying!

Over the Christmas holidays I spent some time both playing around with my layout and coming up with things I liked and did not like. I came to the conclusion that there were some serious issues with my current layout that I needed to change. I hesitated to make the changes, but finally decided I would only be happy if I did.

The layout above is my latest version. There were two main issues:

1. I had put the tracks too close to the outside / backdrop, which really restricted my ability to put spurs and industries there.
2. The double track mainline really just was a big oval - pretty boring running trains around in a circle.

The new layout pulls the track back in enough places to put spurs and industries, as well as eliminates the full double track, replacing it with a mainline with runarounds that does not repeat for almost two full circuits.

I also added hidden freight staging in addition to the hidden passenger staging.