Now that the Lehigh Cement Co. and the Union Bridge street running scene are done except for the fine detailing, My attention has turned to the other end of the layout: Highfield.  Highfield is where the two mainlines of the Western Maryland merged and currently where the Maryland Midland interchanges with CSX.  It consists of three sidings, but I think the wye is long gone.  The often photographed Highfield Train order office sat where the two lines merged.  Here is a map of the prototype area. 

We never have enough space and my layout is a not so large loop.   I needed to model both Highfield as well as a staging track for Emory Grove, the east end staging for the layout.  I ended up with an extra yard track for interchange as well as two tracks against the backdrop.  The far one was for the Emory Grove train.  The train would just sit there out in the open, partially hidden by a CSX train.  I never really liked this design as there was just too many tracks for it to look like Highfield and the angles were wrong.  There wasn't any room for the Train order office (or it's remains).  Here is a photo of how it was laid out.  

There is some empty space to the right of Highfield where I keep the laptop and is the entrance to our attic storage space.  Unfortunately it has a 45 degree roof.  I decided to figure out a way to route the Emory Grove staging into that space.  A lot of tearing thing up and redoing things has happened in the past few days.  Here is the new version of Highfield.  

Now CSX will have two tracks for the interchange.  The Highfield tracks are closer to prototype and I have two staging tracks for Emory Grove that can function as fiddle tracks.  Those two tracks for Emory Grove will be partially hidden by trees when the scenery is complete.  I am still figuring out how to cantilever the staging shelf extending from a 45 degree attic wall and still have access to the attic crawl space.  I will save that problem for the next blog entry.