I must start this with a bit of backstory, my name is Sandy Saunders and I live in Worcester, England. For the last twenty years or so I have been a member of an N Scale modular group ( Snake Bend - link) and have found it enjoyable and fulfilling. Two and a half years ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. At first the didn't make a difference to my involvement in model railroading other than problems controlling my hands, but last year I felt the need to accomplish something which was unique to myself rather than part of a greater collective effort.
When we moved to our current house in 1998 we had the loft converted to give me room for building a layout. Although I once made a start, it didn't go anywhere much as I felt somewhat limited by the low roof and the fact that I was enjoying working with modules. Restarting this effort seemed to be the best way to achieve my aim of a proper N scale layout featuring the Chessie System for which I already had plenty of rolling stock.
Fast Forward to July 2016, I took the baseboards from my previous attempt and ripped the plywood surfaces from them. New 9mm plywood tops were screwed in place using the old frames and legs, a mistake by the way. When assembled there were noticeable sags which had to be levelled using wedges, plus the whole thing has a slightly flimsy feel, although that has gone now that everything is screwed together.
The baseboards, taken together, made a space ten feet wide by two feet deep, four feet at the ends. There is little headroom, I can only stand up in the middle and I'm only 5' 6", for this reason the tops of the baseboards are only 79 cm/31 inches high and are designed to be worked whilst sitting in a chair. With the ceiling so low I wanted to lay the track which did not cross the individual baseboard edges, which included all pointwork, and wire them separately. Of course, to start I need to decide on a track plan. I don't really draw out plans either on paper or computer. I worked for the railway here in the UK for some years and worked in signalling design (and thus by extension track design) for part of that time. So I find it possible to envisage a layout in my head. The baseboards were joined up and I roughed out a track layout using old track.
The aim of this was to prove my "design in my head", check that point switches were directly over important bits of the frame, make sure that there were no overtight curves etc. The next step was to do the wiring. Now I had already decided to keep that to a minimum, not too difficult with DCC of course. Additionally the points would be worked by solenoid switches and then only when on the main line or distant from the baseboard edge. Anything easily reached will be switched by hand. I'm also going to give street and building lights a miss, it is daylight all the time in my new world. Remember that with Parkinson's Disease it is difficult to control your movements and fiddly wiring and soldering are difficult, that solder is darned hot when it suddenly jumps at you.
It was certainly easier to wire the baseboards when they are upended than reaching up from underneath. although I have found that it is more convenient and easier on the arms to reach up from underneath on a low layout (31 inches remember).
The next stage is to assemble the individual sections and complete the trackwork and associated wiring, but first I wanted some sort of back scene. My choice of location for the layout, mostly flat Michigan, was dictated by the fact there was little headroom for hills and, of course, the Chessie System had a strong presence there. The imaginary line is supposed to run between Bay City and Manistee, although the locations modelled are figments of my imagination. There are a lot of trees in this area, so that was what the backscene needs. About this time I watched a video on Trainmasters TV on painting backscenes which gave some good guidance on painting trees. So I copied the techniques, albeit not to the standards of the presentation. The trees were painted directly on the wall which was already painted sky blue. I have to confess that I have made little effort to reach the highest standard of scenery, my time in modelling is limited before the hands become too shaky to achieve anything. I'm aiming for a more impressionistic effect, much use has been made of chalks on the ground surfaces for instance. Once the backscene was finished the baseboards were joined together and the track and wiring completed.
Work started in July 2016 and the above photograph was taken in January 2017, so progress hadn't been as fast as I wanted, partly down to the fact that my wife and I had spent two months in France in our motorhome during September and October. However, it was obvious that I needed to press on, this was only the first stage on a layout which was intended to stretch all the way round the loft. Probably five years work even if I could put a lot of time into it.
Soon I was able to call the track complete and the first locomotive was run on 2nd February.
Further work saw a fascia fitted and the top extended out to it.
I also started work on buildings for the layout, something I enjoy much more than woodwork and electrics. Although again Mr Parkinson makes things difficult, particularly when painting.
For some reason, I don't know why, I started doing the scenery and buildings at the left hand end of the layout and worked towards the right, a point I'm reaching about now.
The fascia remains unpainted, I really can't decide what colour to use, any suggestions will be welcomed.
When I finish this section I will be building some staging off to the right as you look at it here, probably about six tracks as I'm not planning to have more than a few trains running each day when I reach the operations stage. The layout will continue round the corner to the left, round a small peninsular and down the wall behind me as I take this photograph. Eventually it will come to a town with a yard from which a train or two will service this location. That's an autoparts plant you can see in the photograph above which will be the source of most of the traffic here. There is also a team track at the left hand end. So that's where I am, there is much more I could say, but this is enough for now.
Sandy Saunders
