railroad redesign.
I have been toying with railroad redesign.
The plan I'm working with would remove 3/4 of my current railroad, leaving only Crooked Creek, n, my saw mill town, and State line, the dual gauge interchange with the Marietta and North Georgia, directly above it, and the Narrow gauge in GeagoKayoosa NC. above that.
I have a nook, that was intended to be a dispatcher's office, but while it was set up for that purpose, it is a clutter magnet, and has been too full of clutter to have been used for anything. That nook is just wide enough to hold a 21 inch radius helix, and just tall enough (before the sloping attic ceiling closes in) to allow that helix to get close to the height of State line.
The room is not wide enough for much of a shelf on the east wall a center peninsula and the needed aisles; and that is why I did not use this shape in my original designs; but foot wide shelves on that east wall , with a 16 foot run each, on three levels, will add a whole lot of run to the main line, and leave room for aisles, and a center peninsula that is four and a half feet wide at the fat rnd, tapering down to three feet wide before tapering down to the helix area..
What would be lost is the brutal steep grades and tight curves of my mountain division, and a lot of the dramatic mountain scenery. I would gain a longer main line run, reduce my maximum mainline grade from 8.5% to 3.3%, ( I might want to have some outragious sidiungs to keep the geared locomotives happy). My Southern interchange in Harlow could be made much more interesting, with the ability of Southern trains to come and go in both directions through a larger Harlow TN.
Underneath Harlow, I would have room for a much larger Montgomery Furnace, with more interesting Iron ore operations.
On the top level of the new stack, I would have some room for mountain scenery, a lot longer and gentler run for my narrow gauge, room for a redesigned Iron ore re-laod and a log reload as well. I might be able to fit my water powered sawmill up there, with narrow gauge and standard gauge access, getting logs form the Narrow gauge, and sending most of the lumber out on the standard gauge.
I am pretty much sold on the idea of making these changes; and would have started, if I had a magic wand that would poof what I have in boxes and store them away. My RR room is so cluttered though I don't have a good space to use for disassembly and storage of critical components. to start I will have to clean up the railroad room, the garage, and do a lot of organizational work. One thing about this plan I hope to have some logging camp staging on of the long foot deep shelves, those could be build quickly and easily, and could be used as staging for Crooked Creek, so very quickly into the construction phase Crooked Creek could be operated as a 2.5 ft X21 ft switching layout.
Bill Nelson