Planning and pondering

In "Why Would We Want Wicomico", I talked about the first draft of the layout design for the MCTD. As a refresher, here was the original design of the Wicomico St. portion of the layout: 


But like I said, I couldn't leave well enough alone. In the "What's In A Name" post, I mentioned that I decided on proto-freelancing so that I could , well, basically, still do whatever the heck I want. And here I saw some problems and opportunities.

After living with this plan a while, my thoughts came around to:

• At 20 feet, the module was longer than I really wanted.
• As someone correctly pointed out, there is no runaround to get the the locomotive properly oriented to serve all the industries easily (although the prototype seems to have faced the same issue).
• If we assume that the operator will be standing on the bottom side of the layout, the spur that goes inside the building at DS Pipe and Supply (Spur G in the picture below) would be difficult to access, especially if I build the building close to its prototype design.
• I have no idea what the spur at the far left went to.

Planning for Portability

My unfinished basement. A.k.a. "The Disaster"

As you can see at the right, my basement is not finished yet. In fact, it's not even really organized yet. Okay, it's a disaster! In this shot you can't even see the stack of railroad-related boxes waiting to be opened, like Christmas. At any rate, I have a long-term project in front of me to get the pipes moved, walls framed, electricity run, drywall added, and a drop ceiling installed. But, having already been layout-less for quite some time, I don't want to wait around until the room is completely ready before I start to build something. Read: I still want to play while I finish the room.

My plan, therefore, is to make the Wicomico St. project portable. Since there will be room construction going on at or around the same time as layout construction, I decided to put the whole thing on wheels so I can move it around as needed. And trying to wheel around a 20-foot-long behemoth around in a basement with lolly columns isn't convenient. I decided smaller would be better.

Instead of the five 2' x 4' dominoes I originally intended to use, I decided to build the layout on two hollow core doors and only a single 2' x 4' domino I had left over from the layout (such as it was) at the old house. Two inches of extruded foam will be put on top of that, then ceiling tiles as the subroadbed, a la Jim Six in Model Railroad Planning 2010. The combination will be sturdy, quick and clean to install, and allow me to include the minor elevation change on the prototype without the worry of open grid or L-girder benchwork.

Modifications for Operations

In order to shrink the module down to the size I wanted, I needed to make some changes.
Before I go into them, let's overlay the map with some building guide and some labels.

• Spur A, while visible from above, is not shown on the 1989 Roadway map, and it just seems to run into a parking lot. Since it's so far down on the left, I decided to cut it, an obvious 4 foot savings.
• If you stand on Wicomico St. today, Where Spur B ran off there is now a Waste Management facility. Again, nothing on the Roadway map.
• Spur C has been covered over by new construction, but again, (are you sensing the pattern yet?) there was no operation there in the Roadway Maps that I have, so I decided to cut both B & C in the interest of space. More on the space issue in a second.
• I don't want to be having to reach over anything too tall at the front of the layout to couple and uncouple cars. So it became obvious that I needed to make the buildings at the front short to make access better. However, DS Pipe (Spur G) is a really interesting building that I wanted to model, (how many industrial buildings do you find in the middle of the city with a ramp and parking lot on the roof?) not to mention it had a spur into the building, so I decided to relocate it to the behind the track, and the location where Spurs B & C were on the original plan seemed to be the right place.

The New Plan

Given all that, here's the modified plan:

The new plan basically fits on the two doors with the extra domino. But there's still a problem. I don't know where to put the runaround. The most natural place is where the elevation change should be, and I'd really like to include it if at all possible. So, I'm going to open it up. What do you think? Where should I put the runaround? I'm thinking I'll need to run around 3-4 50 foot cars, so I need a couple of feet. Leave your suggestions in the comments.