Bringing The Malabar District On Line

The Malabar District is a pair of micro layouts arranged in an L shape in a storage room next to my main layout.

The section at top right I built, with a few changes, from the late Jack Trollope's Box Street plan. I did this about 15 years ago and ran it as a stand-alone until recently, when I built the shelf at left to connect with it. I incorporated Jack's original drawing into the plan above.

The curve at lower left leads to my main layout in the next room via a tunnel through the wall.

At this point, the district operates mainly with a local that runs from Malabar to Paper Box and back. One thing I discovered in the change from making Jack's Box Street a stand-alone into a part of a larger layout is that I've had to change the way it operates. The original design works from a sector plate at right, where equipment is loaded and the train starts and returns.

BBut considering the way the original plan is oriented, I had o connect it via the straight section at the other end, on the left. This left the sector plate with less to do, since the way freight that runs to Paper Box now enters and leaves from the left. After giving this some thought, I've decided to use the sector plate as a fiddle yard, a place to place and remove cars. Then as I gave this more thought, I realized that the way the funnel to the main layout is built, it can't handle high-wide cars.

So operationally, I've set up the old sector plate as a fiddle yard interchange for high-wide cars onto the Malabar District. I've tweaked the JMRI operating plan to account for this.

Here are some shots of operation with regular trains on the district.