When we moved into this house in 2008 long-distance moves
and career changes meant it had been several years since I’d
had a large home layout. Over the years, I‘ve witnessed several
of the hobby's premier practitioners, many of them friends of
mine, complete their highly successful “lifetime” layouts only
to tear them down and start building anew. Their stories are
exciting and I follow their progress in the press and on the web,
still awestruck that they've razed their old-and-famous pikes,
only to start over..
Those are the good news success stories. Less heralded are sto-
ries about stillborn layouts, layouts that are torn out before they
reach any form of “completion.” This is my story. My layout was
designed to get as long a mainline as possible into the space.
1: A Central Vermont N-5-a class 2-8-0 (converted
from a Bachmann 2-8-0) leads a Canadian National
C-Liner across the bridge at Williams Creek on the
author’s HO scale CV Winooski Subdivision.
1
Getting Real Column - 2
MRH-Mar 2013
