After too many years of not even having room to store a module, I'm finally going to be able to build a real layout. My wife and I are moving into a new house where I'll have an entire spare bedroom to use as a combined office and layout room. Okay, so I won't have room to model the entire BNSF Southern Transcon, but I'm still excited. The new place also has plenty of space for a workshop in the garage, and a big enough yard that we can have a dog.

At the moment, however, planning has been hindered by the fact that we don't take possession until next week, so I haven't yet been able to measure and map out the available space. In the meantime, I've been trying to think seriously about what I want in a layout.

To start with, I like urban "scenery". Cities full of people have always seemed to be much more interesting to model than natural settings. For the past several years I've been looking closely at the Los Angeles Junction Railway, located in the cities of Vernon, Commerce, and Bell CA (originally called the Los Angeles Central Manufacturing District). It seems to have the perfect grungy industrial look to it, along with a spider web of track running everywhere - 63 miles of track in an area of no more than 7 or 8 square miles. It's also quite busy, as BNSF's Barstow to Los Angeles manifest train (M-BARLAC) terminates at the LAJ, and they also have transfers coming from Malabar Yard and the UP's J Yard. Through several operating sessions on a friend's layout, I've discovered that my favorite job is switching the various industries, and my second is making up trains in the yard. That's pretty much all the LAJ does, which makes it look like a pretty good fit.

I've acquired a few HO scale cars so far, the longest of which is just a hair under 10" including couplers (Walthers Trinity 4-bay hopper). Based on the article about curve radius in the very first issue of MRH, it appears that 30" is a reasonable minimum radius for reliable operation. At the moment I'm thinking in terms of #6 turnouts, but immediately after the move I plan to get a #5 and a #4 and run some tests. (The prototype has curves as tight as 21° and switches are mostly #5 and #7. A class I mainline this ain't!)

I'd already decided I like the modern era, so that's what I'll be modeling. Power at the moment consists of an Athearn CF7 painted for LAJ and a Proto2000 GP60 painted BNSF patched, both of which are correct for pretty much anytime between 1998 and 2008. However, I anticipate eventually acquiring an ES44DC and a Genset to handle the BNSF and UP transfers respectively, which would place the date around 2007 or 2008, or as late as 2012 once I get around to kitbashing an MK1200G or two. After 2012 there's been nothing to visually distinguish an LAJ train from a BNSF train, so that's the hard cutoff.

One other thing: I'm intending that this will be a temporary layout. I'll build it, learn a lot, then tear it down and build something even better in its place.