Justinmiller171's 2013 Adoption Challenge

[Justinmiller171]

Over the weekend I was able to get a hold of a piece of plywood to use as the benchwork for this layout. I want this layout to very easily portable, so I chose to go with a 1ft x 4ft board. 4 square feet isn't much in Ho-scale, but awhile back Mike Kieran drew up a good design for an inglenook on a 1x4 that I thought would make a great layout.

Here is my version of his plan:



As you can see it is a 3-2-2 or reduced-size Inglenook switching puzzle, but I think that this layout will also be capable of prototypical operation.

There are two industries that will be on the layout, one is a warehouse with two car-spots and a team track with one spot.

I imagine that the typical operation session would begin with the train positioned at the right end of the layout where the engine crew will speak to the warehouse manager about which cars need to switched, the engine crew would then pull into the lower-left spur and then begin switching the industries.

There most likely never be more than 5 cars on the layout at a time so there should be enough room to prevent switching from becoming too frustrating. I plan on operating it so if there are 3 cars already on the layout then the incoming train will only have 2 cars, and if there are only 2 cars on the layout then the incoming train will have 3 cars. I hope this will prevent the layout from becoming too repetitive.