A Building Boom, Sort of...

I've commited myself to finishing or starting a new structure for my layout each week. So far I've been able to keep up with that promise. At the same time we've been working on new kit designs, shuffling and reshuffling which kits will get made during the rest of the year. In the meantime, look for a new kit mid-March. We've also been working on Scott Mason's Direct Buy layout here and there.

The layout is finally beginning to define itself, I've only been working on the pennisula which will be a fictitous branch line of the New Haven RR located between Mystic , CT and Westerly, RI. Dubbed the Salt Neck Branch, it consists of three small islands connected by fill, all of which serve the seafood industry, mainly oysters. It's much easier to proceed on the layout once it has a name and a purpose. I think my current rate of progress may be in large part to this decision making. Now I know what the major industries are and what minor businesses would be needed to serve those industries. It takes the guessing out of what this or that should be and narrows it down. Being that I've chosen oysters, I'll include at least three major oyster processing structures. Oyster middens( piles of shucked oyster shells) will be a focus of several detail scenes, like coal piles on a coal branch. This will aid in underlining the branch's purpose.

Beyond the pennisula, the layout travels around the walls and will depict, so far( I change my mind often in this regard) Brooklyn and Queens NY where the New Haven met with car floats at the East River and New York Harbor. Of course I am compressing this into 11'x17', so every choice affects another.

I recently came to terms with the fact that the Brooklyn portion could not accomodate a car float operation, whic was important in defining another aspect of the layout, which was the handling of NY City subways cars that were delivered by car float. This was my way of using all those great new subway cars by Lifelike/Walthers , without having to model the subway. The cars were taken off the floats and delivered to the SBK, South Brooklyn Railway, which interchanged with the subway lines to deliver the cars. But I'll manage to include it somehow, by extending the layout to operate just above my work bench in a section, 12" deep; essentially a shelf that will have only the car float operation. This works out even better, as it will create more distance between the float and the yard. But this is months away, maybe longer.