First and foremost, to all my US friends… Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you had a good day filled with family, friends, food and football.

I have read and reread my last post and I found it rather long and wordy. What I was trying to say in a nutshell was that until I got the lower level mainline in, the helix made no sense.

So with that in mind I installed the last couple of pieces of plywood for the New Brighton yard. This will tie together the staging area with the rest of the layout. Once installed, I realized a couple of things that probably weren’t going to happen.

In the first picture the mainline is going to loop around near the backdrop. I had hoped to fit a turntable and roundhouse inside the loop. The turntable is a must as I need to turn the steam engines, however the roundhouse will not fit. I am looking at several options to give the impression that there is a roundhouse here without actually having one. Also the back of the tall red building to the right  will be up against the backdrop hiding the helix.

In the second picture near the bottom edge, you can see a couple of brick walkways. Again, I had hoped to have the station for New Brighton here. But a station would take up a lot of real estate that I need for a yard that already is a bit on the small side. I have the strips in place near the edge, again trying to create the impression of a station with out the station.

I have already started drawing out the track center lines for the yard and  mainline. Once I have that more or less finalized I will see what I will be able to fit into the rest of the space.

Any work on the actual layout will be a bit slow between now and Christmas. My wife would like the cabinet doors done before Christmas, as there will be extended family over for the holidays and the layout is in plain view from the family room. I actually would like them done too, as this will remove the distraction of what’s below the layout.

I will keep you updated, till then – Happy Railroading…