I finally held the first official operating session on my N Scale Arizona & California Railroad on Dec 15, 2018. The session consisted of a two man crew switching the town of Blythe on the branchline. We only ran one train, the Blythe Local, but it took the crew about 2.5 hours to run the job, plus about half an hour of work before moving the train getting familiar with the trackwork, writing their switchlist, and prepping moves. I'm really glad they took the time to think ahead and didn't just grab the throttle right away.

Doing the article for MRH put some more motivation in me to get some work done on the layout. I've been spending a lot of time lately on getting cars and locomotives built, detailed and weathered. I'll be at the N Scale Convention in Salt Lake City in a few weeks displaying models and entering them in the contest. When I need a break from that, I've been working on backdrops and getting the Blythe Branch operational.

After befriending an old trainmaster for the Arizona & California Railroad and seeing the exceptional work here at The Railwire, I wanted to try my hand at modeling with more of a prototype focus.  I've always been a fan of GP35's and the A&C has one particular locomotive that is an ex-SP unit that has some neat detail that would push my modeling skills and hopefully teach me some things. I decided to build two of these locomotives so I would have the extra practice and two unique pieces of equipment.  The prototype is ARZC 3503, ex-SP 6356.

Well, it's been over a year since my last update.  In that time we've had a rapidly growing toddler that has taken up 99% of our time and we also managed to finish the rest of the basement so that we had space to enjoy as a family that was next to the train room.  While we finished the basement, the trainroom became a storage room and needless to say, there had been no work done in there.

It has been a long time since my last update.  Part of that is due to an addition to our family, we had our first child at the beginning of July, she takes up most of our time, but it is wonderful.  I've been working where I can on the layout, mainly getting the subroadbed, roadbed and mainline track installed as well as getting some rough cut fascia put up.  I now have a fully functional mainline loop for a continuous run, just need to cut the circuit breakers in when I get there.

As I progress with benchwork I am beginning to realize that the true dimensions I have feel much bigger than they did in CAD.  While this means that the trains should look nice and I will have plenty of room for large industries and great scenery, I've realized that I have left out the potential to use space above one of the helixes.  the plan was to just build a large canyon, but this is a big area that may be useful.

We will be following along the progress of the two helices for my N scale ARZC.  The helices are each 18" radii with Atlas code 80 track nailed to 3/8" plywood.  Each turn of the helix will be constructed with 8 chords of the 3/8" plywood, each chord will be joined by a biscuit and then 2" tall blocks will create the space between levels.  One helix is 6.5 turns next to the classification yard and the other is 5 turns in the corner where the branchline starts.  The branchline will be on 0.25 turns of the second helix, above the mainline.

I plan to keep this blog updated with the construction of my N scale layout, protolanced from the Arizona & California Railroad.  The layout is housed in a 9-fft x 20-ft finished room in the basement.  It will be double decked with the majority of the lower deck being staging, the exception being one siding for meets.  All of the action will happen on the upper deck with a classification yard and a branchline.  Track will be a mix of Micro Engineering code 40 and 55 with handbuilt switches.

I'll keep a few more photos of my builds and loco roster in this blog for my N scale Arizona & California layout.

I'm going to try and keep a running log of my N scale locomotive builds here for the Copper Basin Railway.  The prototype runs copper ore in Eastern Arizona and will be a shortline on my new layout in the coming year.  I will have 4 locomotives total to build, two high hood SD35's and two RSD 4/5's, each a matching pair.