XR Rebuild

 One of last summer's efforts were related to the Crossroads (XR) control point.

This area has been plagued by various issues over the life of the layout that I trace back to the crappy plywood that I used as subroadbed here. This plywood had separated plys and inconsistent thickness over its run, which caused phantom uncoupling and other operating annoyances over the years.

When I went to put in scenery, I realized that it was going to be just about impossible to add in any structures.

So, the obvious solution was to rebuild from the ground up.

I made the area wider, matching the width of the lower deck, across the entire area. I also updated the track layout to better match the prototype.

I moved the crossover south around 6 feet, and angled it, to make sure that I could make the mainline match the curve to Hamilton smoothly.

This has been in place for the last 6 sessions and I have gotten good feedback from the crew, so I will put this down as a success. In a future post, I will talk about the structures that I've installed in this area.

A few more photos can be found on the gallery at richmond-terminal.org.

Scenic Satisfaction OR How to realize your original choices weren't optimal

 One of the things I keep discovering is that even background structures need at least 1.5 inches between the edge of the track and the backdrop to be installed.

Many of my switching areas has less clearance than that, and in some cases, there is 0 between track edge and backdrop.

One of those places is in Greendale.

After multiple attempts to fit a backdrop structure in at Boxes to Size, out came the oscillating tool.

Here's an aftermath shot:

Note the standard wall color - this had been covered my the masonite backdrop previously.

More Changes - Backdrop at North Acca

 There was a huge open space at north Acca that I'd thought about turning into an industrial switching area, but the reach in distance was going to preclude anybody but folks that were tall from working there.

After thinking about it, I decided to make the backdrop curved and closer to the track, making more of a shadowbox effect in the area.

Here's a shot of this work in progress:

April 2026 Operating Session

After a much longer layoff than I planned on, an operating session was held on the 2nd Sunday in April.

The winter months saw a significant rebuild of the South Milford area. The initial track layout in this area wasn't very prototypical, and there was a switchback that was the source of many operator complaints on getting the work done here too.

I took that feedback, and realizing that trying to apply scenery in this area wasn't going to be easy either, I decided that a full rebuild was in order.

It took way longer than I wanted it to, but that's how it always go.

 We had a new crew member join us for this session, Reid.

A few shots of the rebuilt area:

 

The coal train made an appearance:

More pictures can be found on the gallery on richmond-terminal.org.

May Operating Session Recap

 Due to Mother's Day, the normal operating session was pushed back to the 3rd Sunday.

A full crew trooped down to the basement and put the railroad through its paces.

More pictures on the gallery on richmond-terminal.org.

South Milford Rework

 As frequent readers and operators can attest to, the area of South Milford wasn't optimal from a track perspective. It was one of the first areas that I built when I started construction in early 2017, so what I thought was a challenging configuration, ended up being very time consuming to switch, and awkward to install scenery and structures. I decided to make some changes to better reflect the prototype layout of track in this area, which would also make the scenery easier to deal with.

Here's a shot of what it looked like before, taken by the famed photog, O. Missing Link:

You can see the switchback tracks at upper center left, and the large space between the industries and main line.

The area around the corner to the left was empty. I had eventually planned to put an industry in there, but had never solidified my plans.

This rebuild neatly sewed this all up:

Easton and Potomac Website Recovery

 As many know, the Easton and Potomac was a local layout here in the Richmond metro area that was the standard bearer for the community.

Brooke on the E&P. This is the crossing of the RF&P that I model from the other POV on the Richmond Terminal

The layout owner did a great job creating and maintaining a website about the layout. I had made a copy of it soon after I had heard that he had died, with the intention of eventually restoring it.

After the passing of the layout's owner a few years ago, the layout was dismantled. It reprises in a modified form elsewhere.

There was a domain name for it, which has since been squatted on by a domain squatter, so I will NOT link that domain here.

I have restored it to http://ep.richmond-terminal.org 

Plenty of pictures during the final open house for the E&P can be found on the gallery.