Out with the HO, in with the N.

[danielb]

Well, I've procrastinated long enough dabbling in the Horribly Overscale, and I've sold my entire HO collection and my layout to make space for a new N scale project.

I've tentatively called it James River, after the waterway in Virginia, but I wanted to make a rail/marine layout for a while, and figured why not? I've also been gawping at video and pictures of George Selios' Fanklin and South Manchester, and figured why not set this one in the transition era, to allow me to run my growing collection of steam locomotives?

On top of that, my wonderful wife Laura has allowed me to make use of some of the unused space in one corner of her crafting/computer room, so I've been able to set up my St. Charles, VA. layout up in there. This will allow me to expand on the operations of both layouts, with the St. Charles layout being the source of coal and lumber being delivered to suitable industries on the new project, and vice versa.

Here's St. Charles in it's new home:





A nice bonus here is that I can now get access to the unscenicked coal mine scene on St. Charles to progress the build on that part of the layout.

So, I had a tentative plan for the James River layout by combining a couple of Iain Rice plans, as you can see here:



As it stands, I'm thinking of going back over the long section of the plan and completely re-doing it to put it all on a curve that comes out of the board at the front, like a mini-peninsula, to give me a bit of space at the back for some F&SM style city scenery. I think what I'll do there is build the benchwork to the space I actually have available, then figure out a trackplan that will actually fit into the space I have, rather than the space I THINK I have!

In the mean time, I've been working on some structures and the basic land forms for the harbour area, and I'm getting to a rough mock up that I really like.



Ignore the woodland scenics riser supporting the underneath of the truss bridges, I put that there temporarily so I could confirm that the gradient would actually clear the lower level tracks enough to not foul them if I ever wanted to run high cubes or autoracks.

Some of the buildings I've been working on will be posted whenever I am able in this thread, but here are a couple to get the ball rolling...

Scalescenes Stone Mill: