My goal was to spend the winter of 2014-2015 designing the layout on my computer. To create a layout at least somewhat to scale, I started by roping the raised bed off in a grid of 10x10 foot squares, and then measuring the odd sized areas around the edges.

This is my initial sketch of my "survey". Never mind the fact that north/south are upside down by map standards. I was standing at the north end looking south when I started drawing. The approximate size of the layout is 20x60 feet.

Note "Layout 22". My first computer drawing was #1. Yes, that's how many times I changed it before it got to the final build of the mountains.

There will be 4 loops in this initial layout. Initially I had more hills and trestles on more of the loops. Then I did some grade testing to see what my locomotives could do on grades, and I subsequently flattened a couple of the loops out.

The themes in this layout are logging, farming, and small town life. All of my locomotives are steam engines, and era will be early 1900's.

The darker green loop going around the mountains will be the logging train. It will loop around up the mountain on the left, cross a long high bridge on the front side (bottom of drawing) to the mountain on the right, loop around back down and cross a lower bridge on the back side.

The blue loop is the perimeter loop, and will be a freight train. The ligher green loop in the middle will be the passenger train. The red loop is what I am calling the "work" train, having a variety of different "work" cars like crane and style of caboose known as a "working caboose".

In case you're wondering what I mean by "initial" layout, phase 2 of this project a couple years down the road will nearly double the size of the layout and add a mining theme.

I rearranged which types of bridges would go where a few times, too. Whether it's a blessing or a curse is debatable, but the long delay in getting started on my layout resulted in a lot more time to do onine shopping (especially eBay) before actually starting on the layout. As a result, I had quite a collection of bridges ready to go, not to mention collection of locomotives and rolling stock. And plenty of time to get the locomotives converted to battery power.

The drainage detail was another layer in the drawing that I added after discovering that I needed to work on drainage problems.

I buried what I hope is more than enough wire before putting down the top layer of landscape cloth and gray trap. I used UFB wiring normally used for 110VAC for even the low voltage to keep line drop lower. Although my locomotives are all retrofitted for battery operation, I buried wire to allow track power in case I decide to run track power potentially for guests. It is easier to do that now rather than later. Whether I run into problems with the lack of multiple feeds per track remains to be seen. But my battery powered locomotives aren't going to care.

While these drawings are shown in no order of significance on this web page, I can tell you that this drawing of foam block placement is the one I spent the most time studying and working on. Blocks 1-3 and 4-6 are all full size blocks, 3' x 4' x 8'. The rest are smaller blocks cut from larger blocks. You may recognize the placement when you look at the pictures of the foam cutting in progress.

The various "+" numbers on the tracks are elevations measured in feet above base grade. A big part of the rough calculating at this stage of the game was keeping the grade at 5% or less, and adjusting the block cutting "recipe" accordingly.

The layouts that started counting at #1, and are up to #22 in these drawings, are only the layouts counted after I got close enough to "final" to take the time to put them on the computer. I had many pages of hand drawn interim and partial layouts before that. Long before committing to computer drawings, I built a test ramp that was adjustable for grades of 2% to 10%. I had no guts - I put sides on the ramp in case of derailment. Otherwise it would be a 3-foot drop to concrete at the top end when the ramp was set at the steepest grade. I ran the locomotives (or tried) with various loads and various grades, and soon realized I needed to lower my expectations (by a few degrees).

I had read that the models, with their electric motors, would be capable of pulling unrealistic loads. I found that my models actually performed somewhat true to life. The 3-truck Shay could pull a heavy load up a steep grade - exactly what it was designed to do in real life. The 4-6-0 on the other hand could barely pull itself up a steep grade. The problem was not wimpy motor, the problem was wheel slippage. And wheel slippage was also a real life problem for the real steam engines.

And now, more rope tricks. The rope trick above was Fall 2014. This one is in Fall 2015. Using rope to visualize track layout is said to be a technique commonly used by garden railroaders. With this green rope, I am visualizing where the passenger train loop will go. The bigger reason for doing this is that I want to take some measurements to start mapping out where buildings will go. Since there are some irregular shapes to many of the areas, I need to map them out. Planning my small town streets and surrounding countryside will give me something to do over winter.