October 9, 2020
We've been dealing with a mess at the house and model railroading has not been a priority. I hosted two operating sessions in September just to see if the switching system worked, which it did. However, the session was pretty dull so I've suspended having any more until I get the peninsula built.
I had already laid out part of the peninsula but finished the rough layout last night. I'm going to be using 3/4" birch plywood to act as the vertical supports for the layout sections, based on some discussions I had with Ondrew Hartigan of ModelRailroadBenchwork.com.
Figure 1: The peninsula will attach to the existing decks at the marks on the middle deck. The peninsula will have three decks -- two that match with the existing decks, and one at 18" that can be operated from a chair. This section is 44" wide at most. The branch line and low deck will be 20" deep, which and will be wide enough to provide both a switching area on each deck and a few hidden tracks on either side of the branch line deck. I'll need to rough out the design, but I think the top deck will probably be a little narrower than 20".
Figure 2: The start of the peninsula has to shift to the left to get through the narrow section that provides access to the center storage room. The section here is 16" wide, which allows for a 4" center support and 6" of track on either side. This will be runthrough track on all three levels.
Figure 3: After getting through the choke point, we can start widening to the left to allow for the blob at the end of the peninsula. The blob will be 72" wide, which will allow for a 30" radius helix to connect the middle deck with the branch deck, along with a loop around the outside on the branch deck. There will also be plenty of space for switching on both sides of the peninsula on all three decks.
Figure 4: The dot on the far end of the helix is 3' from the sump pump room wall. The solid blue line on the right is also 3' from the existing layout structure, which allows for enough space.
Figure 5: The dots on the floor mark out the 3' radius circle, although it may end up being slightly wider to provide enough space for the helix to fit.
Now that I've got measurements and know that things will fit, I need to start layout out a better design on graph paper, after which I can design the benchwork and figure out the lumber needs. I'm looking forward to building this to make the layout more interesting to run. It will have a mix of single a I've already started acquiring flex track and roadbed, but the big expense will be the turnouts, as usual.
