Lots of changes on the home front since January, the wife and I had a son and moved out of Toronto to our our first house in Barrie. Finally I now have a train room to call my own with approximately 200 square feet to work in. Sadly there little time to work on anything with the little guy and lots else to be done on the house but for the time being I can start dreaming up my new ho layout. These are the ideas Ive come up with using a demo version on anyrail5 using under 50 sections of track. My new train room has to accommodate the black creek so it will take up the other side of the room leaving me with three other walls to work with. The final design is what Im gearing towards at the moment, I want a compact point to point layout with some interesting operation aspects yet be loaded with detail. I have locked down an era yet but I like 70s to the late 80s and most of the details I had left from my previous ho layout was from that time frame. Basic operations for the layout consist of using smaller engines gp9s pulling a small freight from the staging at the bottom of the layout through the country side to the upper city industrial harbor to do some switching of local businesses and the harbor docks as well as dealing with the inbound and outbound ferry barge traffic before heading back. To mix things up a bit Ill have a small commuter traffic coming to the station using either a small passenger train or rdc which will tie up the main line for a little while. This time around I plan on building the bench work to be broken up into 4 to 5 foot sections in case we move in the next few years and keep it as light as possible using mostly blue construction foam. Hopefully I will be able to get this project going this winter when I have some more time and planning done.
