After much soul searching and gnashing of teeth, I've decided to pull the plug (as it were) on my Ogden River Railway. I've enjoyed building it, and doing some limited operations with it, but problems continued to arise, not the least of which was my decision to use 2" foam slabs from some of the benchwork. The soundboard effect, which was at first, merely annoying, has become intolerable, and I haven't been able to find a workable solution. Add in the fact that if I ever were to get sound equipped locomotives, you wouldn't be able to hear them over the noise made by the trains on the benchwork...

Second, I always imagined the ORRY as a transition layout; one to further hone my skills and find out what I like and what I'm not so crazy about in the hobby. It has served that end perfectly.

And finally, as I started into the scenery stage of the layout, it became obvious that my scenery, even in the roughed in stages, didn't look like the area I was supposedly modeling - the area around Ogden Utah. It looked more and more like the hills and mountains of my home state, Pennsylvania.

I grew up back there... I spent countless hours pouring over books and articles on the PRR, PC, and other Eastern roads, not to mention reading and re-reading (and re-reading again) The V&O Story, by Allen McClelland. I love coal trains and mountain railroading. I love CTC and signaling. I loath graffiti. I love big steel bridges over little backwoods creeks (cricks!) I enjoy helper operations and big honkin' grimy diesels!

I am also aware that the time each of us has to achieve our goals is finite. I finally got to the point where I realized if I'm ever going to have that "Dream Layout" it had better be now. 

So, I've decided to base my new layout on the Monongahela Railway (complete with an all Baldwin Loco roster featuring RF16s) and set in in the mid 1970s. It will occupy, basically, the same footprint as my previous layout, but will be double decked. Double decking will allow me a sufficiently long mainline run, and will allow stack my staging yards one on top of the other.

After playing around with different names, I finally came up with on that I like - the Savage Mountain Railway.

Oh, and this time, I promise, plenty of pictures!

George