Pennsylvania & Western RR - 10
Construction of the layout itself began in October 1996.
Benchwork is open-grid design, using 1x4 pine, with 2x4 legs
scrounged from home construction sites. The layout is built
fairly high. The towns of Annville and Lebanon are both about
52” off the floor. The low point is East/West Valley at 40” and
the high point is on a trestle approaching Summit at 61”.
Roadbed is ½” plywood in most places, with ¾” plywood used
where the roadbed is narrow. All plywood has ½” Homasote
glued on top. Yard and siding tracks are laid directly on the
Homasote, while mainline tracks are elevated on cork roadbed.
Gargraves flex track (which has been around since the 1940s)
is used throughout, while turnouts are from Curtis Hi Rail
(no longer in business) and Ross Custom Switches. I salvaged
15: After the five cars with local destinations have been
removed, the switcher picks up three westbound cars to be
added to EC-11.
15
16: EC-11 is departing Annville and headed toward Lebanon.
At Lebanon, EC-11 will hold the main for a meet with east-
bound coal drag SE-32 seen passing overhead.SE-32 origi-
nated in Shire Oaks Yard outside Pittsburgh and is bound for
Enola Yard outside Harrisburg.
old Lionel uncoupling magnets, and installed them into the
Gargraves track where needed.
The sides of all rails are hand-painted using a mix of Floquil Rail
Brown and Grimy Black. I used four colors of ballast: light gray
for the mainline tracks, dark gray for sidings and passing sid-
ings, black for the coal mine and yard, and cinders lightly sprin-
kled over all areas, so the color wouldn’t be too uniform. The
different color ballast for mainline and passing siding tracks is
a technique many operating model railroads use so the train
crews can tell at a glance which track is the main.
I painted the sky backdrop using methods described by Dave
Frary in several of his scenery books. It took several ugly
15
MRH-Mar 2014
