Progress On The Small N Layout

Things haven't moved as fasat as I had hoped, but I finished tracklaying and basic electrical wiring, and everything's been debugged and is working properly. At the same time, although I didn't originally plan to run passenger trains on it, I began to think about running short passenger trains, with a small shelter and plaform on one part of the layout. This led me to study short Amtrak trains, inclulding the Boston sections of the Lake Shore, Trains 448-449. Here is an example I set up to test how that train would fit on the layout:

As you can see, I've even added some scenery to one corner. As far as small shelters are concerned, I've found a few in my area (both photos mine). Here is Goleta, north of Santa Barbara on the Surfliner route:

Here are smaller shelters on the Glendale platform:

An eBay seller called Model Railway Gadgets offers a somewhat similar shelter in both N and HO scale (photo from eBay site).

It's based on the Mertolink shelter in El Monte, CA.

Very Short Amtrak Train

I was researching short Amtrak trains -- some of the midwest service trains, the Heartland Flyer, and the Borealis qualify, as well as the Portland-Seattle sections of the Empire Builder, and the Boston section of the Lake Shore -- when I ran into this video of a not-quite 448, the Boston section of the Lake Shore, leaving Rensselaer.

The narrator doesn't explain what's happening very well, and I had to poke around to try to get some idea of what's going on here. We know that 448-449, the Boston Sections of the Lake Shore, were discontinued in July due to a sinkhole east of Rensselaer on Amtrak's Post Road Branch, which connects Albsny-Rensselaer with the CSX Berkshire Sub at Schodack to continue to Boston. The trains have been replaced by buses. I've read that in the past, Amtrak has detoured over trhe CSX Castleton Cutoff, but not this time. However, it looks like something needs to run between Rensselaer and Boston to ferry eauipment for the Downeaster, Vermonter, Springfield trains, etc, even if passengers aren't carried on 448-449.

I read via Wikipedia that CSX also uses the Amtrak Post Road Branch via trackage rights. I asked Chrome AI mode about this, and it replied,

CSX has rerouted its freight trains traveling between Albany and the east via its Hudson Subdivision and Berkshire Subdivision. The freight would travel south from Albany to Castleton-on-Hudson on the Hudson Subdivision and then reverse direction to continue east on the Berkshire Subdivision.

So my surmise is this is an Amtrak extra movement that replaces 448-449 to ferry equipment back and forth to Boston for the Downeaster and other New England trains, but so far, I haven't been able to confirm this. But if it is, it must be following a similar route to the CSX freight detour. Normally 448-449 seem to run with as many as four diesel units, plus cabbages on occasion, to perform this function. Whatever it is, it's a prototype for a very short Amtrak train.

Small N Layout

For the past several weeks, I've been working on a small N layout. I rescued a strange piece of what seems to be mahogany plywood from my late dad's garage some years ago, and I always thought it could be used for a small N layout. Eventually I got a couple of Kato N Unitrack sets to play around with, and I started to lay out ideas, but nothing quite jelled. Here is what I was trying to do in 2016:

The dimensions are something like 47" x 27". I set it aside in vertical storage for almost ten years until a better inspiration hit. At this stage, I'm doing final electrical and mechanical testing of the basic oval. Currently there are two Kato Unitrack 20-032 Micro Trains uncoupling magnets installed at either end of the siding track. I'm trying to install them so that contemporary freight cars in the 50-70 feet range can be uncoupled mechanically on a straight section long enough to keep the couplers aligned.

The outside radius curves are 315 mm, which is the equivalent of 24-25" in HO, so I can run contemporary six-axle diesels with the long freight cars. But this will severely limit the number, length, and purpose of the spurs, and I'm still working out exactly where more 20-032 uncoupler magnets and other track sections will go.

Given my age and stage, I've declared myself retired from going underneath any more baseboards. As a result, terminal strips and switch machine decoders are mounted on top of the layout, along the edges as needed. As it happens, there are strange rabbets along the bottom edges of the plywood as it came to me, and they can be used to run all wiring underneath. I'll find a way to mask the terminal strips and so forth with scenery but keep them accessible.

I weathered the single-track, wood-tie Unitrack to conceal the shiny Unitrack look. I've left the double-track concrete-tie sections alone for now.