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In 1996 my wife and I built a new home. From the initial design, the layout was part of the planning process. A site was chosen that would allow a basement, which is rare in California. The track plan and house plan were developed together.
1800 square feet of dedicated floor space was allotted to the railroad
During the construction of the house the layout plan was reviewed by everyone I could find that would help. Many changes were made during that time. Since there was no house, there was no pressure to start layout construction!
As the inspector drove away, construction of the train room and layout commenced. We are 6 years into the project. The railroad was design for operation and operations started as soon as there was enough track laid to do so!
The layout is my representation of the Western Pacific railroad, running from Oakland on the west coast of California to Salt Lake City in Utah. There are branches to Reno and to Turlock ( the Tidewater Southern ). Also modeled is the Highline which ran to from Keddie to Bieber California. This was the WP's connection to the great north west via the Great Northern Railroad.
Scale HO
Track is code 80 on the main and code 70 in the yards
Turnouts are Atlas #6 and Peco #75
The railroad is dispatched using full CTC two color signaling. All mainline turnouts are controlled by the dispatcher. This is all accomplished with the Bruce Chubb "Computer Model Railroad Interface". There are also 2 sets of block signals that are 3 color. The use of 3 color signals requires twice as many output bits, so I only did the block signals this way.
We use a simple computer generated waybill system for the movement of cars on the railroad. Switch lists are used in the yards. 132 way billed cars are moved in a session.
Operation sessions are held every other Thursday evening, from 7pm till about 11pm. We also host out of town groups on weekends as needed
Construction is currently concentrating on the Salt Lake area. When completed all the unit trains will then be self turning, as they run out and back during a session.
This will also add another operator position, with the yard and industries adding additional car movements.
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