Texas City Terminal

About a month ago I had written a blog post -- which never got published -- about how I wasn't happy with the way things were progressing on the Rio Chama.  I suspected my approach was at fault so I began thinking about what I could do to change things up.

It was actually Iain Rice who inspired me to try a different approach.  In Mid-sized and Manageable Track Plans he writes,

"In fact, faced with a larger site, I'm often inclined to consider designing a number of smaller layouts ...  The monster layout concept is great if you only have eyes for the Santa Fe or the Monon or whatever, and can see no attraction in any other prototype.  But a lot of us aren't so focused.  If -- like me -- your railroad tastes are wide-ranging, two or three smaller projects, either in success or perhaps overlapping somewhat, may enable you to keep your interest and motivation high by switching from one layout to another.

It seemed like an interesting idea and I certainly have wide-ranging tastes when it comes to railroads.  I identified two areas that I wanted to try an experiment with, using a smaller project as a vehicle for that:

1. Better planning
2. Benchwork

I spent several weeks skimming through back issues of Model Railroader and flipping through track planning books looking for ideas.  It was about that time which my wife and I started fixing up the office area in our house.  We decided along one wall would be two long and short bookshelves next to each other with track lighting over head.

As a model railroader you can probably guess what happened next:  The ideas collided.  What if I made a small shelf layout for the office and tried out some new ideas in planning and benchwork on that?

Regarding the layout, I found an article series (incidentally also by Iain Rice), Roque Bluffs, a Maine Seaport. The series ran as a set of six articles starting October 2003.  It follows Rice as he builds a Proto:87 dockside shelf switching layout for his office.

The article series covers everything from concept through construction to operation.

The region I had identified for my shelf layout was similar in dimensions but not quite an exact match.  I also wanted to keep things cheap.  If anything has burned me out on HOn3 it's the cost.  $40 for a RTR boxcar, $375 for a locomotive, and $22+ for turnouts are pretty hard hitting on my hobby account.

I spent a good hour wandering around my local hobby shop and finally decided on...

N-scale!

With N-scale, I was able to purchase all of the track (atlas code 55) and roadbed for the entire layout along with a DCC locomotive and a half dozen cars for $350.  In other words, for the cost of 1 locomotive in HOn3 I bought the parts for an entire layout.  I also had a dozen assembled Bullfrog turnout controls sitting my desk as well which I'll be using for turnout control.

I'm not following Roque Bluffs to the tee.  Here are the changes I'm making:

1. N-scale instead of Proto:87 (HO)
2. Original track plan was two 4 ft. modules with a 3 ft. unscenicked staging section.  My version will be two 5 ft. modules with a single staging track that ducks behind the backdrop onto a removable cassette.
3. Original layout was set in the 1970's on coastal Maine.  My version is set in the early to mid 1980's on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas City.  Specifically the Texas City Terminal Railroad though I will be taking a lot of liberties both scenic and operational with my interpretation.

I've already made really good progress on this layout so far.  Coming up in my next post is some of the planning approaches I took and an alternate benchwork construction method.