Modelling Maine Railroads

A few days ago, I made a sketch of how I want my Penobscot Street Spur layout to fit into the corner of a room that I have planned for it to go in. I also sketched out some of the planned scenic elements of the layout, as well as the buildings that I have planned for the layout. The longer section of the layout will be built on top of shelving, and will have an additional shelf built above it. The shelf above will have lighting for the layout attached to the bottom of it, and will also serve to hold the scratchbuilt structures that I have that do not fit on this layout. I am planning on building the benchwork as 'floating' benchwork, as described by Lance Mindheim in a recent issue of Model Railroader. This should result in the layout looking cleaner and more presentable, a good thing as it will be located in a corner of a room. I also sketched in the approximate sizes and rooflines of the structures that I am planning to include on this layout. The scribbled vertica...

A few days ago, I made a mock up of my planned Penobscot Street Spur layout to test how the vertical elememts of the track plan, such as the buildings and hills, would look. I made the mockup from a scrap of cardboard and some masking tape. The masking tape on the mockup represents roads, while the small pieces of cardboard represent buildings. While it's not very pretty or well done, I think that the mockup helps show that the buildings and the hill covering the enterance to staging work together on the layout. From the mockup, I think that the number of buildings I designed into the layout are enough to give the impression that the layoit depicts an active industrial area, while still giving the layout space to breeth, so to speak. At the moment, this is about all the active model railroading that I can do, since my workbench is currently packed away. I'm hoping, though, that I can return to building things soon, but until then, not much will be happening on this blo...

Here is the track plan that I designed for the Penobscot St. spur. Click on the image to make it larger The layout is in HO, with 22 inch minimum radius and no. 4 turmouts, for now. Shaded in areas are roads. On the trackplan, Maine Central's Calais/Bucksport branch runs across the top of the plan, along the three foot six inch long wall. In the corner, the track will disappear into a clump of trees. In reality, the track there would go onto a large bridge to cross the Penobscot River into Bangor. After the track comes out of the clump of trees, the line crosses a street and then goes into a short cut. The switch to the Penobscot Street Spur is located in the cut. The Calais branch than passes under a road overpass, which is located in the upper right of the plan. The overpass actually does exist in real life, and is the perfect way to disguise the fact that the layout pretty much ends after the track passes beneath the bridge. I am planning to have a removable staging t...