Track plans: 1.1

Reminiscing about that first, never-built layout inspired by the C.B. Baird photo, this morning I began sketching out various conceptions. I'm fairly confident that these were all iterations I considered when playing with that design.

The initial approach was the old standby "folded dogbone" design.

 

At the bottom was the focal-point station/yard. The spur on the upper level (center left in the drawing) would be for a mine. The railroad would curve around a prominent mountain--another scenic focal point. Stuff at the back was not thoroughly thought out, as I recall.

Then I read about the benefits of the so-called "twisted dogbone" and took another shot at it.

Same basic concept, except after trains passed the mine, they'd go along the back side instead of curving back around as in the original.

I'm pretty sure I tried designs that would hide some of the track to avoid the dreaded "spaghetti bowl" effect.

The downside on this design, though, is that it seemed to really cut back on the visual--fully half the mainline was hidden trackage.

So that might have led me back to the untwisted dogbone design, with only a short stretch of track being hidden.

It was probably at about this time that I realized that putting the layout on a screened-in back porch in temperate Pennsylvania wasn't the smartest idea. The big piece of plywood we'd put on sawhorses back there, which was going to be the base, was consigned to some other purpose. I went back to drawing fantasy layouts based on what I could do IF I could take over my dad's study.