Track laying has begun

Sunday I was able to spend sometime working on the layout and was able to start on the monumental milestone of laying track......monumental only because it has been a long time coming. These are the two tracks behind the old mill supply building on North Ferry St.  On the prototype the location has seen some clean up work and new gravel in the track side parking lot, looks to be serving as another couple car spots for EQ Detroit as I've seen tank trucks next to tank cars spotted there.  On the layout I intend to use one as an off spot storage lead and the other more as a team track.  The old concrete loading dock will be used to load box cars with recycled cardboard and the gravel lot as a car spot for unloading plastic pellets to trucks.

Nothing earth shattering in the technique. I want this track to look as though it has seen zero maintenance in decades so it is wood ties with every tenth tie being a pc board tie glued directly on the foam base. Turnout is built using Fast Tracks printable templates and PC board ties.  Ties will be a dull gray color mostly covered in dirt and weeds.

Progress might be slow but at least this looks like progress.

hand laying track

My last layout, The Wabash Columbia branch, was built using Mostly Atlas code 83 track and turnouts. It worked well but I decided I wanted smaller rail for this layout. Code 70 and 55 and I also wanted to get away from plastic frogs and hinged stamped points. When I started planning this layout a couple of years ago I did a couple of test turnout builds using a couple different kits and methods and settled in on using the Fast Tracks templates and a few of their tools. I've built about half a dozen this way now and they have a very nice flow and trucks roll very smoothly through them. I did this one last night in about two hours and just needs a few more pieces.  Looks like I'm a little rusty with the precision soldering.... but I think it will clean up ok.

MORE TRACK PLANNING

I think I'm zeroing in on the plan. I've fit in most of the elements I want without making it too crowded. Trying to take lessons from  Lance Mindheim and not over crowed the scene or try to include too much. I'm not sure I don't have too much track but it all serves a purpose. I found the way to fit both EQ Detroit and Schlafer Iron & Steel onto the layout was to kind overlap the two city blocks. Overlapping elements is something Byron Henderson talks about doing in many of his designs.
On the prototype Schlafer Iron & Steel and EQ Detroit are both on the east side of the line. By moving EQ to side opposite as Schlafer and eliminating E Ferry St. They both fit without overly compressing everything.  This will combine the Ferry St. scene along with the engine service/ office
scene at Farnsworth St. I think it is a reasonable compromise but would like to hear some feed back on the idea.

A key scene

This view from the E Ferry street grade crossing is a key scene I want to try and recreate. The look and feel of this is what I'm after. I'm tempted to backdate to 2006ish before most of the right of way was fenced off, referred to as "the cage". The operational steps of opening and shutting the gates would be interesting but I'm not sure I want to build 12+ feet of HO scale chain link fence.

Track Planning

Just working on how to cram a couple city blocks into about ten feet.

I started work on this project a couple years ago after dismantling my Wabash Columbia branch layout and moving to our new home with a finished basement. I never thought it would get put on the back burner for almost four years but that's life.

I've always had an attraction to the off the beaten path railroads, the weed covered branch lines, or the gritty industrial lost the brick canyons.  Ideally I'd do an accurate line for line model. that was the goal with the Wabash Columbia Branch layout.  But one of the lessons from that layout was that I don't have the time to scratch build all the structures. So this time around I'm more for capturing the feel and the look than a perfect 1:87 version.
As I work on boiling down a part of the DECON suitable for a mid size shelf layout I'm drawn to the Milwaukee Junction / Poletown area.

And as I start to trim it down to some thing manageable I zero in on the section between I94, the Edsel Ford Freeway and Farnsworth street.

More to come as work out a plan for my 24" x 120" space.

I've always been just as interested in the research side of the hobby as much as anything else. All the new technology makes it even more fun.  Google Maps, Google Earth, and Bing Maps allow 3D views and we can compare aerial photos taken at different times to the changes in track layouts, and in the case of Detroit, abandoned structures demolished and whole city blocks cleared. The DECON has even added some track but more on that later.