Have I gone crazy?

Well, you might call me that. Honestly. But read on.

As the few operators that stayed until the end of our session of May 7^th already know the St Paul Pass line will be rebuilt from the ground up. The thought occurred to me when I was thinking about the long planned extension into what was a separate room long ago. No matter how I planned the location and elevation of the tracks – it was not going to work in any way. Either I would have to move both staging yards again and make them less accessible or move the dispatcher’s desk or both.

And then, after more than 50 sessions, all the design flaws have been showing their ugly faces:

• The staging yards themselves are a headache with them being connected only on one side.

• No consistent direction. On every part of the layout there are at least 3 levels mixed. What had looked like a good idea 20 years ago did not work out as expected. The engineers are to be expected to know where they are going and what the next station will be, yet they are often confused by trains on the next level, which are coming against them but in reality go in the same direction. The other way around is much more serious as the engineer has no way of knowing that the train going in the same direction is actually coming against him.

• St Paul Pass and its vicinity are in reality nothing like the Colorado Rockies. It’s more rolling hills with few rock faces covered by trees. Due to the different levels all integrated into the same scenery the small horizontal distance between the tracks leads to a huge vertical distance, which in turn leads to large rock faces everywhere. That not only looks out of place – it is.

• To steep grades for the trainlength
  I followed John Armstrong who said: “Model locomotives haul more than they should on grades, so grades should be somewhat exaggerated.” Obviously, he thought of 10-12 car H0 trains and not of more than 30 cars in a train in N scale. And for sure he did not mean to apply this rule to helices. It is more than challenging for the operators to get over the 3%/45cm radius helix on the upper level. We have had far too many derailments and other problems there. None of us is slim enough anymore to get in there which results in damaged cars and locos whenever we have to rescue a stranded train.

• Accessability
  When I had been installing the signals, I cursed myself for having to crawl under the layout and soldering over head or in barely reachable spots. I swore I’ll never get under the layout again. But as I’m getting older (and wider) how long will I be able to crawl down there? So this would have been needed to get solved anyway.

• 2 of the 3 big industries currently operated are not within easy reach. This results in frustrated operators and damage to the scenery.

• The dispatcher’s desk is too big, resulting in the occupation of valuable space. If it was smaller and more isolated it would be much better.

• I did not use cork as a subroadbed, but leftover foam which is used as a base for flooring tiles. It seemed a cheap and perfect solution then, but it is too soft in the long run, resulting in all kinds of problems with the turnouts. Especially those turnouts that are hard to reach.

• I do not like Peco turnouts and track any more. Not because they are bad or poorly designed - beware! - no, but they are not designed for DCC and they do not work well with modern, slim wheel treads and besides that I had to modify every turnout to make them safe for operation. Code 80 looks huge and the ties are too big. 20 years ago, that was all that was available. But now with the fantastic looking Atlas Code 55 track....

And the master argument ("The mother of all arguments") is: At my current age it is hard to do, but I'll manage. In 10 years from now I might feel too old to do it again. So it's now or never.


Everybody is encouraged to challenge this decision. I'm looking forward to intense discussions. No timeframe has been selected yet.