Track plans: 2

This post will be updated later with an image, but right now I'm on the laptop and not near the scanner, so I'm just going to write it.

The next design I seriously considered was to have been a shelf layout. It wasn't my own design, but that of my friend Ken. It was to go along the wall of my bedroom on the first floor of our house. The idea was to run from a small yard with an engine house, meandering through a woodsy terrain, past a spur serving an industry (which I decided would be a furniture factory -- I'm not really sure why) and terminating at a tiny port with a car ferry. If I recall correctly Ken and I decided passenger service would be mainly a single gas-electric railcar.

Two things appealed to me about this idea. First, it was going to be high on scenery. The second is that it would go from one place to another.

That's unusual for a small shelf layout, I think. Usually they depict a single location, like the Model Railroader Kinnickinnick Ry. & Dock Co., found in the book Popular Model Railroads You Can Build.

Because in all my railroading fantasies, it was the idea of creating a miniature world and depicting the movement of trains from one place to another that most appealed to me.