Barney Secord flies the Grand Valley...

[sailormatlac]

Funny that you'd mention it, Matt, as I was thinking about it last night when I was re-doing the photos.
Most of the mainline track is in place and the rails painted, but other than that, it's a construction zone, with tools, material, and junk everywhere. Maybe once I get it cleaned up, although there's really nothing of interest on it yet, as I can't decide what industries are to go where. I thought that having a full plywood surface on which to work would allow me the freedom to put the tracks wherever I wanted, but it seems more constraining than cut-out plywood roadbed. It also looks like it will be about as urbanised as the rest of the layout, not the semi-rural scenes that I had envisioned. I've probably got too many structures for the space available, too, which will make it difficult to give Mount Forest, the northern terminus of the line, much of a city-like appearance.
I think, in retrospect, that I was very fortunate that the original layout turned out as well as it did, despite not having a trackplan or even much of a design concept.

Wayne

Good to hear! Funny how too much freedom is sometime extremely limiting. My hunch is that your deep knowledge of railroading enable you to come up with a coherent vision without a plan. So far your intuition with that layout was quite good since you have many great photogenic spots. And I think the idea of shooting a layout from an airplane is probably the most natural way to fully understand how it works together.

Matt