Ok, things are looking more concrete. I am still in the sketching ideas stage and have nothing really ready to show here yet, but, here is how its looking for the layout.

I want to have the L&A depot and its 2 tracks. Across the street will be 2 of the big warehouses. For my purposes one will be a L&A, warehouse and the other ICRR. There will also be a team track. The mainline from this will run like the protype did, up Ceio St. To Poydras Yard. Now I know its had to visualize without showing you but my Poydras Yard will be curved and shall be a bit shorter and will not have as many tracks. The main will come in on the north east side of the yard and run up the yard track to where it turned off to the L&A trackage.

Mike informed me that the L&A, had a turntable, and rectangular engine house just north of Jefferson Davis Parkway, and had a turning wye there. From what Mike turned up the Southern Belle would head straight into the depot, and later would be backed out, where a switch engine would drag it through the wye, and then would back the belle back to the station for departure. They would store the train at Poydras, and back it back int9o the station when it was time to board. Mike wasn't sure if servicing of the cars was done at Poydras Yard, the station, or if they were drug out to Metairie and serviced there and brought back to Poydras till train time. The L&A had several trains and the Belle was the only one that head directly into the station. The others would all go through the wye first and back into the station.

As far as industries, I definately want Falstaff. I want to scratchbuild that sign, nd have it lit up. I would love tto be able to have it computer controled to show the weather like the prototype. I decided all of my backdrops are going to be photo backdrops wherever I can. I figure using photoshop I can come up with a great backdrop for the layout.

Other industries id like to have are the dairy, swift, cement plant, junkyard, machine shop and the grain and feed . If I can get these into the space I have, then I'm going to be a happy camper. The way its shaping up this will be one lil busy layout for a operating session. I'm figuring 2 to 6 people to run it max. Ideal will be 3 to 4. If I expand it into the next room as a future expansion, then that will change.

I will get on CAD soon to start drawing up some of this to publish later in the week, probably by the weekend. It depends of how quick I can develop a few blocks for trackage. I'm doing all of this in Autodesk, why? Its. Available to me and for me, I consider it the best software for any design work. Yeah there are other CAD programs for model railroading that have neat stuff like files of ready track, and generic building and such, that's all fine, but you miss the bigger picture.

Working from the prototype, and using Autodesk means, I can use all the old survey maps that engineers and surveyors use today to do their work. I have a few of these, and often they have data back to the 40' in the drawings in layers that can be used for layout design. These maps and drawings will have the building footprints down, even if modern, these buildings are the same, and been there for years. Sometimes buildings gone today are still in these maps. So I'm working on getting this whole area now from a surveyor friend of mine to see if I will get a head start with this. Hell some of the newest survey maps will be 3D and then you can actually take the buildings and use them as patterns for building them for the layout. Maybe after refining them a bit, even send them out to be rapid patterened, and used for the layout.

Lots of possibilities guys, I'm having a great time with this project, and just can't wait to see it built. More to come soon, tomorrow I have doctors appointments all day, so hopefully more Thursday.