Featured in the upcoming issue of Model Railroad Planning is community member Tom Klimoski’s Georgia Northeastern Railroad.  A sneak peak of this excellent layout is shown  in his recently produced YouTube video.  Shown below is his track plan.

There are some great lessons to be learned from Tom’s efforts.  A few that stand out to me are:

• The creative selection of a prototype.  Rather than following the heard, Tom selected a unique railroad that hasn’t been modeled much, if at all.  Here’s the GNRR business site.  If you click the “Routes” tab on the home page you’ll see a map of their territory.
• Although he had room for a basement filling empire, he made the conscious decision to limit the layout to a nine foot by ten and half foot, purpose built room.  Doing so allowed for a more focused effort, made higher levels of finish and detail achievable, and at the same time allowed for steady  progress.  As you can see he doesn’t lack for operational interest.
• Note, the abandoned structures, something that isn’t done nearly often enough and really makes the scenes look believable.
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• Selection of car spot oriented industries, such as Dow Chemical, create a lot of believable operational interest without taking up a lot of space.  Operations at Dow were documented in a previous issue of the Opsig’s quarterly publication, The Dispatchers Office
• The use of placeholders allows him to test scene composition until scratch built structures can be constructed.
• Tom also made the effort to tactfully contact the GNRR and establish a relationship with it’s employees which allows him to gain critically needed information on the prototype that you simply can’t get in an armchair.