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Some say silence is golden. I would agree, I have been rather quiet of late. Unfortunaly I have no good news - no progress that you would want to see has been done. But I can report I have had more input for the plan3 on this site by a great contributer from across the world. Check out his letter in the Input from readers section. To say he has looked at my plans and made me think is correct. One aspect is understanding where I am comming from. Everyone who live in Australia already know a lot about the scene here and what I might be trying to model. But if you do not live here, you may not. So I have a very crazy "History of Australia" on my site. It is short, misses a lot of detail, but hopefully helps a bit in understanding our railways. The layout has not been forgotton. I have a half plan on my desk now that has been stopeed as I look at the plan and see what I can do to make it jump out at me. Height of the decks is one area. Using my loco height system the decks are about 7 loco heights high. If I keep my deck relatively flat I will need that helix. Or I could have the layout rise and require a smaller helix. I have always been aware of the effect of the helic consuming a train beteen decks, and the effect on the operators. Or I could try for a helix-less option. This would make the railway basically like one huge helix, more like The Maumee Route that was featured in Model Railroader Planning a few years ago. The problem for me is this restricts the mainline to be a single line run totally. And I have seen several layouts and notice traffic does clog up if a operator has problems. Double track may help but does add a lot od compexity in getting trains onto the right track from a yard or station. So I am thinking again on basic topolgy and what I want. The plan has to excite me for what I want. The railway will alway be my railway, and not a club's. This means I are building this for me !!!!! Yes, I do think of the very real issues of multiple people, aisle widths, and operating pattters. But I also wish to run this railway the way it probally will mainly be used - by myself. I have to find my own balence between catering for a operationg crew and myself as sole operator. Yes you need more than one person to run the railway fully and to make it busy. I'll be happy to run a station and have the computer recieve and dispatch trains to the staging yards. Or just run one train as a local on a quiet day. Now, I will stop there for now. |
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