A close look will reveal that their have been some recent revisions to the site. Part of this is an effort to make it more fluid and readable and part of it reflects some changes on the layout front. As you look at the home page you will notice that the site no longer focuses solely on the East Rail layout but will also encompass a second layout that I've just started building. My N scale Monon layout is no more. Having served its purpose, it was dismantled in December of 2007. The room it occupied was stripped to the walls, renovated and prepped for a new layout. The new layout is based on another spur in Miami called the Downtown Spur. Geographically this is very close to East Rail and is even served by the same train. Visually it is much different however. The structures are older, the industries are different and there is more of a rail/marine presence. I have no immediate plans to dismantle the East Rail layout although once the downtown spur project gets developed I may take it down. The East Rail is fully complete so unless otherwise noted all construction notes and news refer to the Downtown Spur project.
One of the main purposes of this site is to serve as a resource and tool for the model railroading community. If there are subjects you feel should be covered and are not, let me know. If you have suggestions as to better ways to organize the site let me know that as well.
Monday August 11, 2008
Tom Klimoski catches the local doing some noon time switching on the Downtown Spur. The view is looking east and was taken in front of PanAm Frozen Food. This corridor used to be the Seaboards double track main into downtown Miami. To the right of the current track is where the second half of the double track main used to be. The ties are still there under the weeds.
August 10, 2008
A significant milestone was reached on the Downtown Spur layout the weekend of August 9th. All track is now down (except the river peninsula which will be laid in phase II) , the electrical feeds connected, and the DCC system installed. The layout is now fully operational and trains are running. Track is Atlas code 83, temporarily held lightly in place with a few drops of white glue here and there. Over time I will gradually replace the Atlas track with more the more detailed Micro Engineering code 70 rail. While not particularly detailed, the Atlas track is very robust, extremely reliable, and literally falls into place. Using this approach of laying the track twice allows me to get trains running very quickly and allows me to enjoy the full operational potential of the layout while I'm doing more detailed modeling on specific areas.
I've also added a section on prototype operations in the Downtown Spur prototype page.
happened to go by the Florida Bottling Company and found a box car spotted just west of the loading platform and they were unloading pallets of bagged rice with a forklift. As you can see from the photos the truck was completely blocking the road, but no one seamed to really care. Now I know why a regular box car was spotted just west of the loading dock and was not refrigerated, they use the siding as a team track for other businesses when Fl bottling is not using the spot.