Modelling Maine Railroads

Sorry that I haven't posted in a long time, so here's a video of some operations on my layout. There is no sound, and the video is short - but trains are moving and you can see some of the scenery that I've completed on the layout. This is posted on youtube - you can probably view the video in a larger format there. Also, if for some reason you can't see the video on the blog post, here is the link to watch it directly on youtube:  https://youtu.be/GYr-ned2Ez0 I'll try to post some photos of the progress on the layout over this weekend.

Over the past few nights, My layout has changed quite a bit. It now depicts the Maine Central Railroad in Norridgewock, Maine. I will explain this in a later post, probably over the weekend. For now, I will just dhare some poctures of the first HW-2 (Bingham to Waterville local freight) through my version of Norridgewock. HW-2 approaches heads through the limited trackage at Norridgewock. Looking at HW-2 from the driveway of a house near the tracks.   HW-2 heads through Norridgewock. An overview of Norridgewock with HW-2 running through it. HW-2 in Norridgewock. A view of HW-2 from a house near the tracks. HW-2 departs Norridgewock and heads south to Waterville.

After working on the layout this afternoon, I ran a train to Norway and back. I thought I would share a few pictures showing a train running through the areas that I have recently worked on. This photo shows the train just after crossing Bird Brook and starting to round the curve out of the Norway terminus. The train approaches the camera. Though it is not the best quality photo, I think it gives some realistic heft to the locomotive. The train crosses through what will be a field and prepares to enter the future location of a forest hiding the entrance to staging. I will post about what I did on the layout later .

After test running the layout, I held a brief , informal, operating session with my Dad and Grandfather. The layout took about half an hour to operate informally, and was very enjoyable. It takes about two minutes for a train to operate between two ends of the layout at very slow speeds. We operated a three car train to Norway and spent around twenty to twenty five minutes switching the yard. We left town with a short, two car train. Here are some photos of the operating session. A Grand Trunk Western boxcar is set out at the lumberyard.  The locomotive heads to switch the team track. The locomotive returns from switching the lumberyard. Norway has been switched and the train back to Portland is being made on the passing siding. The train is ready to leave and the crew is taking a break before leaving for the return trip to Portland. The train begins to leave Norway yard. The train has arrived at the end of the layout. Loo...

This morning, I finished laying track with the help of my Dad. An advantage if a smaller layout like mine is that tracklaying can be completed in the span if a few days. I used plain Atlas code 83 flextrack for the track. After tracklaying was completed, I hooked the layout up to a power source and started to test the layout. An alco RS-3, currently primary locomotive, was run back and forth to test to see if the layout would actually work. The video above shows the first test run of the layout. I then put together a train of three cars and ran it from where staging will eventually be located to the town of Norway. The video is broken into three parts for ease of uploading them to the blog. This part of the video shows the train leaving from near the future staging area, running through the countryside module, and entering the corner module. This part of the video shows the train crossing Bird Brook and entering the yard at Norway.  This shows the train coming to...