Time for a new layout

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.

The 2015 Barrie train show

This is my first time in the Barrie show, it was at the Bradford Greenhouse Garden Gallery so it being a greenhouse there is lot of natural light which was a nice. The only downside was the temperature difference through the building was heated and it being -28c outside it could get very hot or cold depending on the sun shining but from the amount of people I saw I figure the fridged weather only helped draw in a bigger crowd of people. I took a few pics of the show not much of anything I havent seen before, the garden g gauge look really well done with the trees and shrubs, I was very curious as to how my layout would photograph in natural light.

 The midland layout

Toronto railway museum

 The barrie club layout underconstruction

2014 Train show in Bowmanville, Ontario

The end of an era

 Officially on Oct 4 2014 The Right Track in my hometown of Bracebidge closed its doors forever, retiring after 13 years of service. I was hoping that the business would have found a new owner and kept on going but that was not to be.  Heres a few shots I took on friday while picking up a few closing sale deals, still a fare bit of merchandise left, according to the owner he will sell the rest at train shows. The store looks pretty much the same as it did when a few years ago that I purchased my first n scale equipment, tracks and scenery for the Blackcreek. The store will be missed on my treks north, another little piece of my past going the way of the dodo.

The stores layout, now sold, was a wonderful depiction of scenery construction in n and ho scale showing from rails and cork to plaster and foam cover. It was also a great test bed for new and used locos and rolling stock.

After the party

The ferry terminal on the layout and an addition of a launch and barge kit I got at the show.

 Took one of my cars and cut it half for something to pull out of the water. This will be a nice little scenery change up to the ferry

A new loco I picked up at the Barrie show last winter its a Kato make before they started using the atlas drive mechanisms, so it has no flywheels inside and the electrical pickups are junk so its motion is jerky and tends to stop over switches when the wheels or the track is dirty.

At the show I could finally get some different perspective shots of the ferry

Heres the start of the launch kit I picked up at the show, its an artitec kit which also makes the ferry. Its an easy kit to build, simple resin base with laser etched metal and resin parts added on top.

 Got to test drive a bachmann 4-6-0 for a bit, was a very nice looking loco, had electrical pick up leads on the tender so going over the switches was smooth, it is dcc ready which doesnt matter to me as I only run dc.  Just wasnt sure if I wanted to back date the layout to the 50s /60s  it would mean I would have to invest in a lot of earlier era vehicles as well a rolling stock.

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