Over the last few weeks I have been working to undo that, a little bit at a time. Yesterday I shared a shot showing a bit of benchwork and some backdrop. Today I painted the backdrop. It's blue now, hardly worth posting a picture yet.
Readers might be interested in what is planned for the area, though. The basic idea is one side of a paper mill, with tracks for loading boxcars and unloading tank cars of chemical and kaolin clay. The paper mill will be modeled using building flats, just a few inches deep. First attempt at a trackplan looked like this:
It seemed like too little room for the spurs. I just wasn't happy with the arrangement. Since one spur was facing point and one trailing point, a runaround was needed. Then I was paging through Lance Mindheim's book on designing small industrial switching layouts and stumbled upon his idea of using a crossing to gain some space. That changed things up some, to this:
Now that's more like it. Keeps the runaround, but gives the spur more breathing room. I even added in one more track, for "off spot" boxcars. The loading area is on the left and tank car unloading will be on the right. Now to find an Atlas Code 83 19 degree crossing...
Next time I will try and share some more of the track plan, and outline the operating theory of the layout. Here's a hint: my track plan and operating concept have been heavily influenced by exposure to the Twin Ports.
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