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Scale - The WC&SRR is an N-Scale pike. |
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Location - The WC&SRR is a fantasy division of the B&O based on the B&O right of way from the Ohio River at Cincinnati running north to a point (Trenton, OH) north of Middletown. |
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Time in Space - The clock is rolled back and frozen at September 15, 1958. Why? Sorry... no deep or profound revelation here. My reasoning was that fall is just beginning (so it's still "green"), the 1959 cars have reached the dealerships and, at ten years old, I was an absolute train nut! |
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Terrain - Rolling hills with plenty of interesting limestone strata in the cuts. |
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Layout Style - A continuous running design which exits the main layout room ("leaving the basement") and returns from the rest of the basement. |
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Basic Construction - 1/2" Homosote on 1/2" plywood with an average height of 64" to maintain a comfortable adult viewing level. in areas that required the "cutting in" of topographical features such as creeks and gullies, 1/2"-2" blue foam on 1/2" plywood was used. Art Fahie of Bar Mills Scale Models preached to me about the merits of a "tiered" effect and it appealed to me. So, I incorporated quite a bit of elevated terrain in the Spring Grove and Wyoming areas using built-up blue foam. |
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Control System - DigiTrax Radio Chief with a mixture of Digitrax and Lenz decoders. |
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Trackage - Main tracks and yard tracks are Code 55 and are hand-laid using the soldered to PC ties technique. Many low usage siding are Code 40. The main line runs 6.9 scale miles (228 feet). Since the track leaves the main layout room and generally travels the entire perimeter of the basement I am hard pressed to guess the exact square footage. 250 square feet of surface area sounds about right! (Add the track length of the main, all the yards, sidings and hidden trackage and you will see why I will NEVER hand-lay another piece of track!) |
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Turnouts - Again, all turnouts are hand-laid with powered frogs. A combination of Tortoise, Builders-In-Scale, Rix and home-made manual controllers are employed. |
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Scenery - Mostly Hydrocal over blue construction foam. Lightweight Hydrocal rock castings finished using Dave Frary's techniques. (Learn more at http://www.mrscenery.com/Casting.pdf) Roads are constructed with common joint compound and most of the trees are constructed from SuperTreeĂâ material and ground foam. (Learn more at http://www.scenicexpress.com/) |
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Structures - A combination of everything: wood craftsman kits, plastic kits and scratch-built structures. As time passes, more and more of the basic plastic kits are being replaced by scratch-built kits designed and built by yours truly. |
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Sound - OK... sound is cool! We have recently added a couple of Precision Craft E-8s with Sound-LokĂâ (learn more at http://precisioncraftmodels.com/N-Scale-c3096.html) and several individual sound modules at strategic locations. (Learn more at http://www.ittsound.com/) |
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Video - Very cool! Nothing beats watching your own railroad from the perspective of the engineer! The system sends the video signal to our home theater system where it is viewed in real time on our 8' home theater screen! (Learn more at http://www.tonystrains.com/technews/traincam.htm) |
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Switching - We are just starting to plan and implement a switching plan. |
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Operations - We are now beginning to plan and implement an operations plan. |
