P5se Camelback's 2010 Summer Structure Challenge GERN Plant

[P5se Camelback]

Well, it seems like I might have been dragged back to “square one!” While pushing my little cardboard mockups around on a piece of plywood, I decided to take a look at how it would look with the curve that will commence right after passing under the covered walkway between the “existing” stone structure on the east side and the complex of new structures on the west side of the tracks that swing north to Scranton - Wilkes Barre. (To be honest, Scranton - Wilkes Barre is reached by a curve to the left, which will then descend to staging under the layout, and therein lies the problem.) :?

So, to mock up the curve, I got a large corrugated cardboard box, split the seam and laid it out flat, laid out a 24” radius curve with a 90° chord, grabbed the matte knife and cut it out.

Clearing all the nice little mock-ups off the piece of plywood and placing the curve in place, it became immediately apparent that I needed a much larger site mock-up … so out to the garage for two pieces of ¼” luan which were placed on the stack of still-unpacked boxes to represent the corner of the layout and the curve was placed back in the corner … uh … ohhhhhhhhhhhh
Damn!

The curve down to staging takes up a lot more space than I had expected. :o Somehow, it didn’t seem like this on paper! (That’s why we build mock-ups, Bonzo!) So … some major re-arrangement is obviously necessary! Boy, am I glad I decided to start out with mock-ups rather than to jump immediately into performing major surgery on plastic walls! To illustrate what I mean by major re-arrangement, I give you …

Initial Rework of Site showing Covered Walkway used as a Viewblock to hide the Curve of the Mainline North (to Scranton - Wilkes Barre) ...


Initial site Rework Showing 24"R track to Hidden Staging at the rear in the corner ...


Initial Site Rework from Hot Air Balloon showing False Front GERN Plant and Mocked-up Track to Staging ...


It seems I'm going to have to do some serious thinking very quickly if I'm going to get this all figured out and still leave enough time to build some better-than-a-six-year-old structures ... I'm starting to think I bit off a mouthfull that's almost too big to chew!

But! I'm not going to give up just yet! 8-)