This is another view of the Packing Plant, ice House, Brewery and Fright House. It also shows a small farm house which was originally a Revell Kit and was picked up by Heljan and I could not tell you if is still available. Here is a photo from the unfinished portion of the layout. This is the Deepole (deep-hole) mine. The mine building was built from my head without plans and uses Plastruct Corrugated siding. The little station in front is a Flag Stop Depot from American Model Builders Laser Kit. I haven't worked on the scenery in this portion of the layout for 20 years, as I am unsure of what to do with it!
The above photo shows the other end of the unfinished part of the layout. One of the big hang-ups in not finishing this are is the fact that all the work needs to be performed while standing on a step stool, not a BIG particular problem; but, not particularly fun, either! The spur heading off to the right goes to the Deepole Mine, the two tracks in the middle are the main line and the one to the left heads towards the new staging yard. This view also clarifies how the main ends up crossing over itself, Another view of the Deepole Mine, from the other side. This also shows the main line coming up along the River, where to the left of the photo it enters a tunnel then exits this tunnel mabe a foot and a half later and comes out in the Snow/Rock Slide shed.
As I was closing out my Photos, I noticed there is one thing I could further explain. The HooDoo Gulch Trestle leads to a loop that is at the left side of this photo. The loop circles around and crosses under the Girder portion of the bridge and enters the tunnel just to the left of the center in the photo. Included into the loop is fairly long passing siding. The other tracks that pass under the bridge are spurs that break off from the main line. From where the loco is in the above photo, as first built, the main descended about 2-3 inches over a 5 foot distance down to the staging yard. Needless to say, this ended up around a 4% grade and this was very steep grade for Westbound trains to climb. It worked O.K. for Eastbounds to descend the grade; but, Westbounds just couldn't handle the grade and I had no place to put helper pockets, so I decided to change this portion of the layout. So, with the loop, I cut the grade down to around 2%. The area around the loop is un-sceniced and I'm unsure if it ever will! The loop provided me with a needed passing siding, decreased the Westbound grade to a manageable grade for my 14-15 car trains and allowed me to add a tall trestle to my givens and druthers list that has scenery far below my normal scenery level.
As it sits right now, I have given a fairly good overview of what my layout looks like. Unless someone has some questions; or, I find other aspects of my layout to bring forward, I don't know that there is much more to discuss. I will say that as far as operations is concerned, I use Micro-Mark's Car Cards and Way Bills to shuffle cars around my layout. Because I live in a small town and really don't know anyone else in my local area that is a Model Railroader, operations is not high on my list. For the most part, I am happiest building something from a kit; or scratch built for the layout and having a train run aimlessly around the layout.
