Tennessee Central Model Railway (TCmRY)
Based on the Tennessee Central Railway (TCRY)

TL;DR – Building a new layout in a small area, need some advice based on the information presented below. There really isn’t a TL;DR version I am sorry to say.

Several months ago I started getting back in HO model railroading as the afterthought of a bet with a friend of mine. Initially the return was prompted with the beginning of a model railroad project to go with an automobile project on which he has been working for the last five years and will be coming to an end late this summer or early fall. I guess you could say that was the bug that bit as I have decided in addition to the project layout I am going to build a layout for myself.

The problem with building my own layout is one of space as I live in an apartment. Fortunately it has a dining room which at the moment is only being used for storage. I have room, but not a lot of room. The room itself is showing in image one and as you can see has two doorways, one to the kitchen and one to the living room. As space is a concern the layout will be along the walls leaving the doorways open and accessible.

After some research and reading I decided to, originally, prototype model the Tennessee Central Railway but due to space constraints I don’t believe a prototype layout will work so I have modified my layout idea to be protolance/freelance. The layout will still carry the Tennessee Central road name and numbers as well as colors. Sections of the layout will still be classified as sections of the actual TC even if they are no 100% prototypical. Era for the build is mid to late 50’s to early 60’s transition era so I can run both steam and diesel prototypes the TCRY used at that time. The layout itself is planned for a second lever, above the first, and accessed by a double helix. The upper level will been the coal mines and a couple of smaller whistle stops on the line. A double mainline is planned so I can run passenger service and freight service with the passenger service using the larger radius curves so the Budd passenger coaches can navigate them more easily. My preliminary base level track plan is shown in image two.

During the progression from having one model railroad project to having two model railroad projects I met a fellow model railroader who was taking down and parting out hit layout so he could sell his home. I had opportunity to visit his layout before the tear down and it was impressive. Needless to say I took tons of pictures and asked a lot of questions.

In the past two weeks the gentleman has torn down his layout and has salvaged all the building and other things of value from the layout. Basically the benchwork and base scenery were all that was trashed. During the tear down I asked him to preserve a couple of different building in their “scenery’d” state, one of which I am planning to incorporate into my layout as an homage to his old layout. I am not sure how and where I will incorporate this section as yet, possibly on the upper level provided there is room. The other section, approx. 2ft x 3ft, contains the roundhouse/maintenance area, image three. The track plan in image two will be modified to include this roundhouse in the general area where the roundhouse sits on the track plan. The opposite end of the main bench will contain a representation of the TVA Kingston Coal Fire Power Generations facility which was constructed between 1951 and 1955 and served by the TCRY for coal from the mine of the Cumberland Plateau.

A few more notes about the layout design.
 

• Entire layout will be DCC, initially using my Bachmann EZ Command as I have it and won’t need to buy another until I need it and can afford it. When I upgrade it will be to NCE.
• The benchwork will be built so as to not need attachment to the walls, including the shelf portion of the layout. This will also be designed to be modular.
• My thoughts are for power districts to be the roundhouse/maintenance area, power plant area, helix, yard and two coal mine areas on the upper level.

Now for the questions.
 

• There will be, at the most two operators on the layout and no more than three to four trains at any one time.
• Where/how can I get a yard into the main bench?
• Would it be better to make my yard on a level under the main bench?

Again, about the only things that will be truly prototypical will be the locomotive, rolling stock, generalization of the area the TCRY served and some of the buildings/scenery. The rest of the layout will be more freelance at this point.

Thanks for reading this and hopefully some people will have some suggestion on the track plan and my designs. I am open to comment, suggestions, ideas, thoughts, etc.

Thanks,
T.E

Edit: fixed broken images