8: EC-11 is at the apex of Horseshoe Curve and the locomotive
has just passed the park area.The gift shop and snack trailer at
the base of the curve are seeing a little business today.
decided to use this move as a way to get the full-basement lay-
out I’d always wanted. Unfortunately, I found that most of the
misguided owners of existing houses had wasted their base-
ments on family rooms, exercise rooms, and such.
I decided that I would need to build a basement, and it would
be one designed for a railroad. I specified nine-foot ceilings
and no support columns in the main room (this meant a HEAVY
steel beam). The stairs would descend into the center of the
room, and the layout would be around the walls. The laun-
dry room was designed on the first floor of the house, and we
added a full attic for storage.
The basement would be mine, all mine! I wanted to design
a layout for prototypical operation, that would run point-to-
point (or staging-to-staging) with a nice long run in between,
8
