Explaining My Layout For Virtual Ops

As our virtual operations group gets more experience with what we're doing, we've been tweaking things here and there. I began to realize in session 59 that my layout has a quirky way of doing things that Tony Koester would never, ever endorse, and I would never even try to get my layout published in Great Model Railroads. But John R, who does an outstanding job of organizing our sessions, suggested

You brought up a couple geographical dilemmas your layout faced during PCCM 59. Not having a totally clear conception of how you have your layout divided obviously contributed to the car routing issues.

To remedy these car routings can you provide a map or list of the regions of the country you have included on your layout, the industries in these specific areas and any off layout interchanges via other RRs in these areas. Once we have that and a better understanding of your layout we can come up with better car routings and interchanges that will not be troublesome going forward.

So I worked on updating the track plan to show regions of the country and locations, as well as an updated list of industries that may be of some help. I would point out that as far as I'm aware, our group is not closed, and others who may wish to participate in various ways are certainly welcome to join and start. You certainly don't have to have the sort of layout Tony Koester would approve of to do so, as my example ought to show.

Here is the track plan in the main layout room, with some color coding added to show geographical regions:

The colors are blue for New England (or upstate New York/northern New Jersey), orange for Rocky Mountains/Great Basin Desert, and yellow for California. Gray represents urban area, which extends across the aisle from Zenith to Manhattan Transfer. I recently added an extension to an adjoining storage room, reached through a hole in the wall near Reiden Lake on the main plan:

Malabar is also in California, the idea is somewhat similar to branches in the Central Valley served by the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Western Pacific. (You can click on that image to get a more readable plan.) An extension from Malabar reaches a micro layout now mounted on a connecting shelf, designed by Scottish modeler Jack Trollope, and originally named Box Street by him, now renamed Paper Box to represent a paper mill. Conceptually, this is still on the West Coast. I had a work assignment at such a mill in Bellingham, WA, which is something like what I have in mind. Jack's original plan is below:

I should point out that Anthracite on the big plan is entirely HOn3, so standard HO equipment can't be routed there. Additional HOn3 trackage is under construction in the area where the Bay City name appears on the left hand peninsula.

John R is particularly concerned with setting up interchanges in a logical way. So here is how I see it: interchange with railroads west of the Mississippi and locations there will take place in Reiden Lake, which is actually a fictional location on the Fringe TV series where people cross over to the alternate universe. Zenith, as I explained in a previous post, is a fictional city created by the novelist Sinclair Lewis located, by his account, between Pittsburgh and Detroit. That's probably good enough for our use, although I had a work assignment in Rochester, NY, and sometimes think of it in locating structures and details. Interchange with railroads and locations east of the Mississippi should take place there.

West Egg is a town on Long Island, probably comparable to Great Neck or Oyster Bay, in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. On the LF&NW, it has a car float connection to railroads serving New York Harbor, and interchange with the LV, PRR, NYC, Erie, Lackawanna, Jersey Central, Long Island, New Haven, and so forth can also take place via car float there. Manhattan Transfer can loosely be thought of as corresponding to Harrison, NJ, with Hoboken thrown in, but only very loosely.

I'll post an updated list of industries and shipments at each location on my layout in my next post.