12-11-2014, 05:08 PM
So I've been thinking of adding another era to this layout but a completely different branch line. The town I grew up in is the very end of CSX's Northern Branch. It's an old passenger line that had quite a few rail served customers back in the day and have slowly dwindled to about 7 on a 20 mile branch line. I'm not totally sure when passenger service ended I'm thinking somewhere near the 50's. It turned into a freight branch and they removed all the tracks going into Rockland NY. The tracks are in absolutely awful shape and they still allow SD45s for switching duties that often derail which is why all trains are restricted to 10 mph. I was thinking of totally changing my layout from NYA to CSX's Northern Branch but found it to be nearly impossible to condense the line into 8 or 10 feet. The more I looked into line and its customers I thought my current track arrangement could actually work and now I can have NYA, LIRR and CSX trains running on my layout in all different time periods and locations. Im planning on the era for CSX to be around 2005. My customers will include Supreme Oil located in Englewood NJ who sees on average 12-15 tank cars daily. They receive different oils for salad dressing, mayonnaise and other condiments, my intended siding will only have room for 2 tank cars. 2 customers located in Closter NJ are JJ Demerest lumber and Weyerhaeuser. Including Weyerhaeuser on my layout is the main reason why the time period has to be pre-2007 because there was a huge fire there that closed them down (I was a volunteer firefighter at the time and I'm not sure I'll ever experience something like that again). And last but not least in my home town of Northvale NJ will be Cove industries and maybe Ace Hardware. To make this all work and mesh together I'm going to need to rebuild 2 of my already finished buildings but I really think I'll be able to pull this off. I'll post some pictures of where I intend on placing these industries. So be on the look out for some changes here.