Extension operations

Music for this posting:   :)




Operations.

I'm not a huge operations guy, but I could see the appeal now that I've seen some videos of operating sessions and played around with some operation items myself. My layout is still mostly scene based, but I wanted to have some operation potential on a small scale in my new section. So, the planning began.

My original idea was a simple spur that would head out to function as the fueling area for the factory that I wanted to purchase. However, after thinking it through a bit, I saw that having a few more switching options would be better for the space.

 
I added a few more options in and, while more entertaining, it still wasn't right.


So, I added a few more switches into the mix.....and broke everything. hehehehe  The track wasn't running correctly anymore and the switches would kill power when the train ran over them. All simple fixes, but frustrating at the time for sure.

Shaking my angry fist at the track. :)

After a few tries and fixes, I managed to get things working again.

The idea was to have options for getting passenger trains into the mix with the service trains, being able to switch between running passenger trains and the service trains, and having some fun little switching items to deal with as well.

I was going to use the long run I had from the subway section to the back room as a staging area, but the space...or lack of space....made it a pain. I couldn't get into the space easily and it was not making me happy.

The following photos show the main option I came up with.

This was good overall, but it was still strange. Why would the passenger train be off on that one spur like that? What is it doing out there? hehehehe  While it let me get it up and out of the way, it didn't make a whole lot of sense in my mind. So, I did some more playing.

This option made more sense. The passenger train can hang out at the station or the subway station over on the other side, then I can run "operation" stuff (basically switching tank cars around and the like) on these three sections, which is actually proving to be a fun, slow little detail I'm digging.

The passenger side stayed the same for the most part. I was going to run a little staging spur out behind the other side of the station, but It ended up being strange as well, so I did away with it. I'm going to take a look at some parking, though that's not a super exciting visual for me, so the parking area may be "out of the scene" as it were.

I like the idea of this area being REALLY different than the lovely, tourist look of my other area. This will be a more "real world", working and living sort of area. When I go into deeper planning, I'll be thinking about areas I've seen in my GOOGLE EARTH exploration and will really get into the small, somewhat boring details I've seen in some of these locations. It's going to provide a nice departure from the other sections I have going.

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