Samewith rolling stock. I determined touse generally out-of-
the-box equipment (at thetime, Athearn andRoundhouse,
nowAccurail) tobuildup theneededfleet of 600 cars, and
just fill inhere and therewith a few special kitbashedor
scratchbuilt cars.
I startedout handlayingmy turnouts inplace, butwith120
turnouts, I quickly found thatwas taking too long, so I went
to commercial turnouts to speed things up.
Someof the commercial turnouts don’t perform real well,
so I’mnowusing jig-built turnoutswithCentral Valleyties to
replace theworst offenders.
The commercial jig-built turnout optiondidn’t existwhen I
was at theheight of the track-layingperiodonmy layout, so
I didn’t have that choice.Were I startingover today, I’d go
commercial jig-built all theway. Formoreonmy jig-built turn-
outmethods, see the September 2011MRH:
).
My layout is currently about 30% scenicked, andother than
bridges, there are few structures on the layout.Wehope to
change that betweennow andAugust 2015when theNMRA
National comes to town.
Mywife, Patty, bless her heart, hasmade gettingmore struc-
tures on the layout somethingof a crusade and she’s always
on the lookout for new structures. She’s definitely a keeper!
But this does bringup an important point for thoseof you
that donot yet have a layout. My advice is to get busy build-
ing structures aswell as detailing locos and rolling stock, and
do that
now.
Once youhave space for a layout, youwill be very happy you
built aheadon the things that
goon the layout.
Getting the
layout physical plant built once youhave spacewill consume
Publisher’s editorial - 3
MRH-Apr2014
