The Detour Through Germany

I started what became the core of my "lifetime" layout when I was over 40, and I was 46 when we moved to our current place and I reassembled it in the basement and began its expansion. On one hand, my interests as far as modeling was concerned were mature, and I had a good idea of what they were and what they could become. That was the good news. The bad news was that I liked everything -- diesel, steam, electric, narrow gauge, foreign prototype, the gamut, including all regions of the US.

This meant that I already knew I ran a big risk -- you see how some guys will model the Santa Fe in the 1950s, for instance, and one day they decide to rip out a whole basement layout and start over because they've decided they like On30. I decided I wasn't going to be that guy. I didn't have the time to waste ripping out and rebuilding, and I didn't like surrendering to lack of focus. So I designed a layout that would allow me to follow different interests. In part, that meant setting things up so that sometimes Germany was cheek-by-jowl with the US.

Here's an example, a DM&IR RSD-15 being waved through a junction by a couple of German guys:

I began to realize, though, that if I was going to expand ore operations, I was going to have to route them through Germany.

The German part of the layout has had its ups and downs as I've pursued one or another interest over the years -- progress has been slower than in other areas, but I've kept up the interest. It dawned on me while I was thinking about how the ore operation was going to expand, that this would, among other things, be a good opportunity to address some of the scenery issues in Germany. This part of the layout is pretty intricate, tracks are on three and four levels, with the idea that I was going to scenic things so you didn't quite notice that.

(I used to participate in open houses once a year or whatever, but it wound up being such a chore to explain to visitors what I was trying to do while they patiently explained to me that I was doing it all wrong that I simply gave up having visitors.) Anyhow, one feature I built into the layout 25 years ago was the option of punching through one basement wall into an adjoining storage room. The option branches off the German main line, which you can see here:

It's the switch leading to nowhere in the upper center of the photo. But I realized that if I was going that far, I might as well make some real progress on Germany. Here are a few shots from when I started the project a couple of weeks ago:

I got up on a stool to make this shot on my cell phone this morning: