Moving

Operations on the Path Valley Railroad have been suspended indefinitely as the corporate offices move into their new spaces.

On Friday, in the most blatant land grab in model railroading history, upper level management evicted the Path Valley Railroad from its former operating area in the closet and all railroad related items were removed in preparation for sorting and transport to their new operating area.

The new train room is 13' x 9' 8 1/2" but a 3' strip running the width of the room has to remain open for passage to the closet. All is not lost because the closet will be used to store unused materials. Work has begun to renovate the space and it is proceeding apace. Barring any unforeseen circumstances the new operating area should be completely renovated by the middle of next month and operations can once again resume.

When the bookshelves move out of the office part of that room will become a work area, so no space will be lost for that essential function, either. So, the net space will be 10' x 9' 8 1/2", which is a net gain since the space lost was half of a 13' x 10' room.

The 2' x 8' Clarinda layout will be the central operations area, but turnouts will be installed so that the track can be extended to the rest of the room. I'm thinking that T-TRAK modules will make up the bulk of the remainder, which will give me some flexibility in operations. To that end the trackwork has been taken up on the modules, which resulted in one unfortunate consequence; the extension turnouts will not fit comfortably into their assigned spaces.

One of the turnouts in question has to go in front of the passenger station (which is itself on an unprototypical curve) which means the crossing next to the station no longer fits. Since the street must exist (because I say so) that means everything has to shift down...which puts turnouts on the split between the two 2x4 modules, and this will never do. So, a redesign is in effect.

Everything gets moved down about a foot. This puts the passenger station on a straight, where it should be, and puts the module split underneath the three grade crossings beside the scrapyard. This also means that the longer turnouts that were used in front of the freight station because of where the split had to go before can go back in, which to me is a better setup anyway.

This means that, once again unfortunately, the stockyard has to go. On the one hand that's bad because now I have no reason to have a stock car and no siding to switch it into when I do have it. On the other hand, there was not a stockyard on that particular piece of track anyway. Perhaps the stock car can be put on a module somewhere instead, maybe paired up with a slaughterhouse, and the spur that is left can become the meat packing plant that actually did exist on that particular piece of track.

Now the only thing that is lacking is time.