Fiddling with layout ideas

[sailormatlac]

Matt...

Looks great! I really like the gradual transition into the station area. Very much like Trevor's approach and the scenes you see in Ian Wilson's books.

One comment I have is that often, the passenger car would be left at the station while throat her switching jobs were completed. With the end of the run around right in front of the station, the passenger car blocks the use of this. Moving the station to the left would let the rest of the train escape, but would limit the use of the run around. Moving the station to the right would mean that the passenger car would have to undergo some switching of its own to get it spotted at the platform.

I'm not sure yet what to do about this - it's just an observation...

Andrew

Andrew, the exact location of each building will be decided when I'll mock up the scene in 1/87. If you study Port Rowan and other Ontario's branchlines, you'll find out the same problem occured with real station. It's why I said I didn't understand how some stations did work in real life. The same occured at Connors too. In fact, many, many, many small town station were located directly or nearby a turnout. That's a classic arrangement (for through station or terminus).

At Port Rowan, the passenger cars did block the escape pocket. Trevor has the same "problem". The answer is to push the train back after passengers leaves the car and LCL is handled. Then you can perform the switching moves. When everything is done and the train is rebuild for the return trip, you move it back at the station. Doing this helps me to keep the lead smaller so I can have a longer runaround to handle decent sized mixed trains (from 5 to 7 cars).

The funny thing is that I think the layout would look awesome if operated as a MEC branchline in the late 1920s too.

Matt