Wolf River Spur

[FCIN]

Ed - It's HO

Thought it was HO, but thought I'd verify that.

Completely agree with your philosophy regarding switching lead length. In my case I'm able to turn the door liability into a no-pressure part of the layout that functions. This room has a nine-foot ceiling, and I anticipate the "benchwork" (shelfwork?) will be around 58". That leaves exactly 50", so if I want to fabricate the stick on a hinge, I'll lose an inch or two.

I'd thought about having a hinged staging track, but would limit the length because of layout height and the drop ceiling. If I added that additional staging shelf, I'd just make it semi-permanent so should access be needed on that end, I could remove it without too much trouble.

I have installed Sergent couplers on a few pieces of rolling stock and plan to use them generally. All it takes is a Nimrod car with Kadees on one end to satisfy the rest of the world!

I've wanted to experiment with the Sergent Couplers, but I for now, I'm quite happy with the (more or less) scale size couplers and manually uncoupling them. I have a feeling if I tried out the Sergent couplers and was happy with them, then I'd be looking at spending a lot of money to upgrade all the loco's and cars! Being retired, I have to watch my expenditures.

I also admire Lance Mindheim's take on miniature reality, and especially the excellent Jack Hill blog.

Lance has really brought prototype operations and layout design to a new level and clearly demonstrated that simple can be better. I also really like what Jack Hill has done, especially showing how the prototype works certain industries and what can be accomplished in O scale. But am worried about what has happened to Jack. His blog hasn't been updated in over 2 years.