In part 1 of this series I mentioned that one of the things I wanted was to be able to incorporate my existing layout to the new grand one. So, in my earlier designs, I tried to do just that. The existing layout is a 3’x7’ rectangular table. My thought was to use it as the peninsula for an around the walls type layout. But, given that the room is only 9’ long, that would’ve' left me with very little clearance to go around it. To make it workable, I would need to make some modifications to the existing layout. Mainly, chop off the corners to improve aisle clearance. The picture below shows how I planned to modify the existing layout. As you can see, it preserves most of the existing layout and eliminates only the unfinished areas:
At the time I was reading the wonderful book by John Armstrong: Track Planning for Realistic Operations. One of the most intriguing ideas in the book was the concept of an inverted loop for hidden staging. So, I thought about just simply dropping one of those in the train room, connecting it to my layout and see what happens:
I modified the inverted loop slightly to allow for a continuous run. I really like this layout, because trains can start off going clockwise or counter clockwise from staging. There is also room for a modest yard at the 9.5’ long wall at the bottom. However, I didn’t like the idea of having to back entire trains through the inverted loop. This could work great for shorter trains, but I wanted to have longer trains, and it just looked like it would be trouble. Also, the 14.8” choke point at the tip of the peninsula was too much.
Right around that time, I’ve come across Dave Vollmer’s Pennsy layout. If you’re not familiar with this layout, you gotta spend some time on his site. He started with a table top layout and then added a beautiful stub-ended yard to it. Seemed like just the ticket for me. So, I came up with this. I also added a small stub ended staging yard to the top whose entrance was via a curved trestle. Oh my oh my! Now, the clearance on the top side of the layout was might tight. However, that area would be mostly used for servicing and I would spend most of my time in the large aisle in the bottom anyways. The one good thing about this approach was that there was no need for a lift gate. Oh, btw, kindly ignore the naïve approach to the yard design. It looks more like a staging yard than a proper rail yard. 
One thing that bothered me about that one was that it didn’t give me any additional mainline run. Yes, I did get an impressive yard, but I would still be stuck with just running trains on the current layout for the most part. So, just to experiment, I decided to scrap the big yard in favor of a longer mainline run. So, I came up with this:
Now, I REALLY liked this one and this is the first layout that I seriously considered building. The trains can come out from staging and thanks to the junction at the lower left, they can go in either direction and do as many loops as one wants around the U-shaped layout. Then they can simply go back to staging. But, after playing around with this in XTrackCAD for a while, I decided that I wanted a yard after all. The other negative thing about this one is the *tight* radius on the return loop at the lower left. It’s about 11” and that is way too tight for what I want to do, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.
This is about the time I also started looking at the prototype. I knew I wanted to run UP engines, and I knew I wanted to do the forests of the Pacific Nortwest. So, I started following UP tracks using Bing maps and Google Earth. It was entertaining but frustrating at the same time as I had to switch back and forth between the two. Google maps mark the railroad tracks more accurately, but Bing maps typically had better resolution pictures. But, I digress.
When you think of UP in the Pacific Northwest, you cannot help but look at two locales: the Blue Mountains, and of course, the Cascades. The Cascade subdivision is just amazing with several impressive scenes to model. Also, Amtrak runs on that track, and pretty much that is the only UP track that Amtrak runs on in the Northwest; they mostly use BNSF tracks. I also came across the two gorgeous layouts modeling the Cascades Subdivision. Both were an inspiration to me:
Of course, I didn’t have the type of room that they had, so I decided to focus on the Eugene-to-Oakridge section which was pretty interesting for me. Here’s my first crack at that:
The light green section is the existing layout. The darker green section at the bottom is an elevated section that goes to a coal mine. Staging for this would be via the use of 60” long cassettes (shown in blue at the very left). I also planned to utilize shorter cassettes for a loads-in/empties-out operation with the coal mine. I envisioned a power plant in Springfield. The mine engine would push the empties into the mine, which would be a cassette. I can then swap that with the cassette that is next to the power plant.
Oh boy, was I excited about this one. This was definitely going to work. So, I decided to read up a bit more about the Cascades subdivision. There are several resources, but by far the best resource is this page by Joel Ashcroft.
Well, this was a blessing in disguise really. I learned that there were no grain elevators in Oakridge, and no coal mines along the Cascades line. Oh well. At least I got it right that there was a yard at Eugene. 
Another thing I thought about was that 60” long cassettes could be problematic to handle. So, I decided to go with hidden staging yard and a more realistic representation of the Eugene-to-Oakridge run, which resulted in the following design:
For this one, I had to chop off a little more of the existing layout. This one would’ve been a fine layout, if it weren’t for the fact that the radii are waaaaay too tight. Both loops on the left, the one around the roundtable in Eugene and the one that goes around Salmon Creek in Oakridge, are 11”. Way too tight. This would be a decent layout if the room was about 2'-3’ longer. Then those loops can go up to about 14-15” radii. One thing I liked a lot about this one is that the huge International Paper plant near Springfield, OR is represented by a hidden spur. Lots of operating potential with very little space.
It was starting to dawn on me that I wouldn’t be able to plan the layout that I want and keep the existing train table. So, I decided to look at what would happen if I started from scratch. That’s what I’ll dive into in the next part.
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