Oh yes, the town of Jackson. As I mentioned in my last post the town of Jackson has turned into it’s own special little hell. And of course it is all my own fault. As originally planned the layout was longer down the length of the peninsula and the town of Jackson ( Kirkland in the original plan from Model Railroader ) almost dropped right onto the layout. And then I screwed up.
First, as I mentioned before in an attempt keep from buying things I didn’t need I started building model ships. Once built, I needed some place to put them, so I put up a wall of shelves. It’s really nice to have someplace to display them and I have received many compliments on them. However they stick out 12″ and the layout had to be shortened. No problem it’s only a foot. Then as the peninsula was being built and I was moving around what would be the end of the peninsula I figured I should have more then the 3 feet I had figured for an aisle, so I expanded it to about 4 1/2 feet. This gave me a comfortable aisle to move things around without hitting the layout or the ships on the shelves. As the peninsula was about a foot short of the original Kirkland plan, plus the foot for the shelves and now another 1 1/2 foot, I was now 3 1/2 feet short.
Second, as I was building the end of the peninsula I shortened up the transition where the table flairs out for the rounded end of the peninsula.
As you can see in the above picture you will note that the subroadbed pushes out almost to the edge of the benchwork. You can bet that as I am laying track, that I going to be sure that it is as perfect as I can get it. A derailment here would be catastrophic to say the least. But as of right now I believe that I can live with it, as the alternative is to decrease the radius of the turn and I am unwilling to do that. It’s one of the major compromises I made on the last layout and I always regretted it. A possibility here is to superelevate the turn.
Planning the town itself has become something of a challenge as I try to get everything into it that I liked from the plan. I realize that some things might have to be left out or shortened. But I’m trying to keep the flavor of the plan. I have found that in some places of the plan that by flipping a turnout around, meaning flipping the straight thru part with the diverging route, I can pick up space as you don’t need to have a straight section to avert an s-curve.
I will continue to plug away at it until I have a workable track plan that I can live with and don’t feel as I’ve compromised. Below is the start of the planning.
As you will note from the above pictures, I made it over to the storage locker for some of the needed buildings. I thought I had the box with the throttles in it, but I didn’t. I guess another trip is in order.
Until next time, Happy Railroading…