Building the Potomac Line

[steinjr]

I do plan on starting construction fairly soon. I would like to use some sort of modular construction so to allow for a move in around 10 years to a new home. I am going to start with an industrial portion of the layout that I found online and just fell in love with. The original is called the Third Street Industrial and can be found here. http://www.westportterminal.de/thirdstreet.html

I have modified it somewhat.


The rest of the layout has yet to be designed. I recently acquired a turntable, I need to get the dimensions for that. One I do, I can begin designing the terminal. I guess you could say I'm have planner's block, don't know where to start.

Dave

Overall your plan is a very good one. But you'll soon get VERY tired of working the switchbacks REAL fast!

Depends on how he works this area.

The third street districts switchbacks in Bill Baumann's original plan are not too bad if you work some when the train passes through the district left to right and some when the train is passing through the district right to left.

There are adequate switching leads for all spurs on the original plan. Except possibly for the right side of the inner main - there you might want to have a cassette to extend the length a little if using this as a standalone layout.

I agree that changing the turnout for the coal dealer track (over the bridge) is an unwise move - it changes what used to be an adequate switching lead for the coal dealer into an orphaned switchback spur, where you have to remove cars at the coal dealer to get into that spur.

And dropping the crossover in the middle of the long siding along the front will make it significantly harder to switch - you now cannot use half sidings as temporary storage while switching/running around.

Smile,
Stein