Original track plan

Although we have had another layout at our old place which was not as extensive as what we have now, we have not included it in this diary of events as this Blog relates to our Diamond Point Railroad.

My brother, who now lives in London came up with the initial plans, which you see here. This plan was made in 2006 and the initial construction was made from this draft.

The layout was composed of three main lines which were all connected via turnouts. So with some careful driving you could move your train from one main to another. It did not have any reversing loops, which we thought made it quite immpressive. The entire layout (L shape)
was 23 feet by 23 feet. The reason we had to change was that we underestimated the gradients and the fact that we wanted to run long trains we found that our long trains could not make it up the gradients. We have learnt lots since this intial construction and we decided to refine our thinking and skills to do a better job next time.

I have included in this post some other photos of the original construction.

The layout as it is now takes up the same area but instead of having crossovers and a number of duck unders, it only has one duck under and is a walk around layout. This has the advantage for guests to observe the operation and see it from a number of different vantage points. It makes it a lot easier for operation too. We have found that there is far less derailments. The disadvantage is that it has taken away a bit of the mystery of knowing where trains are coming from or going. This should be overcome when we have finished constructing our mountain ranges and tunnells.

The blue wall you can see in this photo contains the layout to make its own separate room. This keeps the garage where the cars are away from the layout. The layout is now fully connected as per the video in a previous post. We will continue to update as we go.