A few months ago when my switching layout was almost finished, I thought to have a second layout would be a good idea. After seeing Lance Mindheim’s Miami East Rail layout ( http://www.lancemindheim.com ), I knew what I wanted to do. The bird’s eye view of Live Search Maps and the street view of Google Maps gave me all the information I needed to plan the new layout.
My new switching layout is a combination of scenes I found along the NW 58th and 59th Street in the Miami East Rail District and a scene from the Dontown spur. The trackplan is mostly based upon the tracks along the NW 59th Street. I scaled down an aerial picture to copy the position and length of the tracks for my trackplan. Somehow I like the idea to have an almost prototypical trackplan. The layout is 16' x 14", i.e. the permanent part is 11' x 14" and the removable extension on the left is 5' x 9".When I started to plan the layout, the extension was just a cassette to enhance operation, but somehow it grew – now it will be fully sceniced.
The track is Micro Enineering code 70 and as I like switching with sound equipped engines, I will run the layout with DCC.
As you can see in the trackplan, there is no runaround. To have a runaround that was long enough to be useful would have spoiled my prototypical plan. In the real Miami East Rail district there is no runaround either, the cars are sorted out on the main and then pushed into the spurs. The track at the front of the cassette/extension will be used as a fiddle yard and represent that sorting on the main.
These two pictures give a glimpse of what I accomplished during the summer. I completed laying track and wiring and I started to build some of the structures. I will show some more pics of what I did later, this post is only meant to get this thread going.
In the last few months I made only slow progress, but now as summer is gone and days are getting colder, it is good to go to Florida.
My new switching layout is a combination of scenes I found along the NW 58th and 59th Street in the Miami East Rail District and a scene from the Dontown spur. The trackplan is mostly based upon the tracks along the NW 59th Street. I scaled down an aerial picture to copy the position and length of the tracks for my trackplan. Somehow I like the idea to have an almost prototypical trackplan. The layout is 16' x 14", i.e. the permanent part is 11' x 14" and the removable extension on the left is 5' x 9".When I started to plan the layout, the extension was just a cassette to enhance operation, but somehow it grew – now it will be fully sceniced.
The track is Micro Enineering code 70 and as I like switching with sound equipped engines, I will run the layout with DCC.
As you can see in the trackplan, there is no runaround. To have a runaround that was long enough to be useful would have spoiled my prototypical plan. In the real Miami East Rail district there is no runaround either, the cars are sorted out on the main and then pushed into the spurs. The track at the front of the cassette/extension will be used as a fiddle yard and represent that sorting on the main.
These two pictures give a glimpse of what I accomplished during the summer. I completed laying track and wiring and I started to build some of the structures. I will show some more pics of what I did later, this post is only meant to get this thread going.
In the last few months I made only slow progress, but now as summer is gone and days are getting colder, it is good to go to Florida.
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ops:. So you’ll have to wait patiently for some progress 
:-D Very impressive how you can model something ordinary and make it extraordinary. I'm looking forward to watching this layout develop.
:grin: Very impressive how you can model something ordinary and make it extraordinary.
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