Track Plan

 

Forget the small plans - I've moved and now have a complete bedroom available for a layout. With the help of Maptech's historical maps, current Bing! Maps, and friendly folk on the Model Railroader forums such as Paul and Stein, I have developed the following plan, which incorporates the Alburtis to Chapman section of the C&F. The only major compromise is in the arragement at Alburtis, no branch leading off the main. Otherwise, track layouts are fairly faithful to actual map views of the areas. I'm not yet happy with the cement plant, trying to fit a reasonable representation on a 2' wide penninsula is challenging to say the least. The grey squares are the outlines of the buildings in the Walthers Valley Cement, plus a few duplicates - I have one plant, also thanks to a generous member of the MRR forums, and am looking for another or a few similar kits to kitbash into something more like the actual Lehigh Cement plant on the site. Since the last posting of this plan, I've also added another siding to the left of the feed mill in Trexlertown. This is for an implements dealer in Alburtis, which in the real world is located inside the wye formed by the East Penn main line and the C&F. Without further ado:

 

Some suggestions from the Model Railroader forum resulted in this change to the plan. Tracks are angled, in some cases in a very subtle manner, rather than being all parallel to the benchwork edges. The switchback was eliminated.

Still plugging away on track plans, this one is based on Andrew Martin's 'Supernook' with the addition of the bottom switchback with two spots plus an engine house. Turnouts on this one are all #5 with 24" minimum radius for what few curves there are.

Generating some ideas for a new layout. Since I am currently living in an apartment, I don't have the space for a large layout, not even a spare room size layout. So as seen in the construction progress section, I've built a couple of small layout sections. I potentially have an L-shaped space 6x12, but that would interfere a bit with the normal use of the room (dining room). I've decided that a more simple 2x8 or possibly 2x10 switching layout will have to do for now. After looking over a number of small layout sites, I came up with the plan here, based on one of Andrew Martin's designs. The square outlines represent possible industry locations.