Rigby Yard ready to go

Rigby tracks are now all powered up, cleaned and tested. The only problem was that one of the Peco turnouts was an electrofrog and I didn't have it properly insulated, which caused a short. The problem was easily corrected by swapping turnouts. I'll prepare the other one for another area and another day.
The next project is to finish cleaning and tuning up the rest of the track and see how things run. With a town, a yard and a small staging area I can start mini ops and see how things go.

Rigby Yard tracks are installed

I spent the day getting all of the yard tracks installed. I also put in a short yard lead, which I'll make longer at another time. This is a double ended yard with five tracks. The longest track is about 17 feet. Originally the plan was four tracks. I got concerned with the length and how to get the yard engine to both ends without fouling up the main tracks, so I added the fifth as a runaround close to the front edge so the engine could get to either end. I may add a yard lead on the other end before I get too deep into this project.

The yard is longer, but with the ladder at both ends the yard will hold less cars. It will about 40 fifty foot cars. The old stub end yard with five tracks would hold about 60 cars. If car traffic warrants a bigger yard down the road I can convert it to a stub yard.

Closer to the wall and behind the main line will be some industry, engine facility and the passenger station and tracks.

Passing Siding installed at Rigby Yard

I also installed the leads into the yard. This time there will be better access to the arrival/departure track from the yard lead than there was the last time. The last time you had to pull out onto the main with the yard engine to get the cars to the arrival/departure tracks. This time the yard engine goes straight from the yard lead to the appropriate track.

Throttle panels are all wired up!

I finally got all the panels wired up. I can control trains with the plugs and with radio control. It wasn't without some trials in making up my own loconet cables. But I was successful.

It is another small step forward.

The first town

The is the only town in phase one and all the sidings are in place. It does not yet have a name. I expect to have simliar towns as I had on my old layout, but that is still undecided. I did pull out all of my old buildings to see how to best lay things out. I will have to sell off some of the kits I have collected, because they just aren't going to work on this layout. Besides, I'm seeing a few new kits that would fit better with the New England theme.

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The route to the next area.

If you turn around from the last shot you will see the temporary staging and he return loop. The area to the right will be converted into a town when phase two starts. The part in the middle is a removable section that is temporary. It is only there so I can run trains while I'm working on the layout and converting the engines to run with Digitrax.

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The main part of phase 1

This area is 23 x 12. I expect to have two levels and all bench work will be narrower than before. I would like to have more people room. The area is open in the middle, but I might try a small industrial peninsula as long as it doesn't get in the way. The yard is off to the left and the first town is on the right.

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If you ever wondered....

The old layout is still lying around in pieces in the hope that I can still use them. It's not looking good for the larger pieces. I might still be able to use the narrow sections of the upper level.

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The New BRWM

I am now in the building stage for the new railroad. Some of the layout has been designed, but not all of it. The benchwork for phase 1 is done. The is mainline track down and powered up. One town has all of the sidings installed. I even ran an engine all the way around.
We will run using Digitrax. I have 15 engines with DCC decoders right now and one of those has Tsunami sound. I have a couple more that will receive sound.
Pictures will have to wait until I clean up a little.