Looking for a basement plan - a suggestion

[Anonymous]

In the December 04 issue of MR, Robert Warren in the article - Ahead of its Time - begins the first sentence thusly: "I've often thought that one of John Armstrong's best track plans is his Montana & Puget Sound..first featured in the December 1959 Model Railroader."(p.82)

Well, I've seen this track plan, but modified to the better - believe it or not - operational, and I operate on it, and its a beauty. I can tell you a couple of modifications, two important ones and leave further tweaking to you.

Let me begin by saying this track plan is deceiving as it seems to deviate from all the "around the walls" plans we have seen, but trust me, everyone who has seen and operated on said layout is very very impressed with it. I'm so impressed with it, I'm about to spend a bit of money to get quality strobe lights so the owner can begin to write articles and show it off to the world.

Some of you are unknowingly acquainted with the author of the modified "track plan." His name is Mike Chandler. He won the best model at show in Seattle this summer, scoring 124 points out of 125 for his Berkshire scratch built engine; he built it over 5 years. The level of workmanship and planning was truly inspirational and obviously the judges agreed. Well that same planning and inspiration went into Mike's layout plan. Not one track was moved from his paper plan to its final conception on the layout.

Now to the layout. If you can, grab your December copy of MR and turn to page 82 - I'll wait........ Okay, got it... good. Now look at the plan. The one weakness as it stands is that you can see it from anywhere. While Mike was building his, it was in the same situation; anywhere in the room you stood, you could see any part of the layout - a weakness that made the layout smaller. Now what he did was build a very thin - out of styrene - view block down the middle, going to within 4 inches of the ceiling, along the length of his layout. If you can imagine that view block, you'll realize that visually the layout and spatially the layout immediately felt significantly larger. Corners and crevices held surprises. The fact it wasn't around the walls wasn't an issue, it felt that big.

The second design modification Mike made (he made several, these are the two that stick in my mind now) is that the yard area in the upper left hand corner (the British Columbia Junction area) became two separate yards. Thus his layout became point to point, running North and South. He installed a turntable at the end of the two yards, serving both.

The only modification in Mike's layout I would make is staging which I would add underneath the table. However, to be fair to Mike, his layout is a 1932 way freight layout, with the maximum number of cars on each train numbering only 6. Sounds kind of wimpy doesn't it? I can assure you that the first time I ran it, it took me two and a half hours to get around his layout with all the switching thrown in. New combers are often intimidated by his "simple" layout and trains.

I agree with Robert Warren, a great layout, made greater by Mike Chandler's modifications.