The jello that is the yard layout for Deseronto is stiffening. Track for passenger service (under the shelf for the upper level) and the yard ladder has been finalized and spiked/glued in place. Access to the service areas and industry tracks (back left corner) have firmed up considerably. There have been many iterations of this layout/review/rethink design process.

The fun has been trimming back the stock turnouts to the minimum without warping the rails out of gauge or making the track flow too irregular. It was a design decision to stick to small steam and diesel power and the smaller cars of the 1950's and before.

Wish I could have done this with software, but it just didn't work out well for me. I have had much better luck laying the track out on the base and fiddling with the pieces until it started to make some sort of sense. Then sit back, pour a stiff drink, and run trains in and out in my mind. Since I had a small space to work with it was imperative to make the best use of it.

Given the limited space I decided to use Walthers background buildings for the industry area -- they are pretty thin and allow me to put a number of sidings into the limited space available. The angle of presentation is not optimum for anything except maximizing the number of industry sidings. Interestingly enough, the prototype was also pretty jammed in according to the period photographs and track diagrams I have found. But the builders had a proportionally much longer space to work with. And they never had much of a yard, just a tangle of industry tracks and dock stubs -- I tried to model that but the space just wasn't right.

Things are in an awkward place now in that there are too many things not powered up to be able to run a train or two through the trackage to test it. Last time that happened was weeks ago when the helix was completed. I am eager to power things up again. But it wont be for a while.