I think I’ve fallen into the trap that many modelers find themselves in with their layout progress, the layout design will never be perfect. At least now that I’ve attempted my fifteenth layout plan I’m realizing that the room is actually pretty small and has a lot of limitations. So I’ve narrowed down two designs, tweaks allowed, to move forward with. I realized that once we move from this house, it’ll all be for nothing anyways and rip it all apart when I have a new, hopefully much bigger, space. In the meantime, I had a little eBay crazy period and scooped up some buildings and rolling stock that I wanted for the layout. Click-thru for the full details.

Layout Design Options

Option #7

Sawmill, lumber yard, quarry, diesel facility, other industries.

Option #15

Upper level of Merrimack Valley Railroad. Large sawmill complex on bottom left, large brick textile mill next to river with dam. Diesel facility and yard with other industries.

Lower level of Merrimack Valley Railroad with return loops. Could fit in some kind of staging.

Purchases

I grabbed some of the buildings I want from eBay and the Greenberg train show. I’ve also purchased a handful of rolling stock and some DC locomotives. I grabbed to Atlas U33C with Guilford D&H #650 & #651. They have sort of driven the design as they “need” 22″ radius curves. I have yet to actually run them on any curves, but the layouts above have I think 20″ – 24″ radius curves. Though not prototypical curves and they might look funny, I just need it work because the room is just short about two feet in either direction to get better curves. I’m trying to find a good deal on Digitrax DCC equipment so I can start playing around with electrical. I’ll post more pics of the rolling stock soon. Below are the buildings I recently purchased.

Several discontinued Walther’s sawmill buildings such as the Walther’s Planing Mill and Shed and Walther’s Mills Brothers Lumber Yard. The Walther’s log unloader should arrive in a couple days.

Various layout buildings and details

I also need to dig out the buildings I already have from when I was younger and evaluate them for use. Many of them are complete or semi complete but my attention to detail when I was younger is not to my standards now.

So have I actually made any layout progress? Let me know what you think in the comments below!