1. My Very Last Layout
Faced with a
terminal disease and not enough time to even get a good start on the long-planned Black
River & Western, I flailed about looking for some modeling to do, and considered one of the many unfinished micro-layouts
I had sitting around. But as I dragged each one out and fiddled with them, I found that they just weren't doing it for me. Then I came across the
nearly-finished station I'd built for the Greystone & Rock Bottom (right), and it hit me: this was what I wanted to
work on. I'd come full-circle back to my first "real" layout, the White River & Northern I.
But I wasn't coming "full-circle" back to yet another circular layout, as I had with the Greystone; it would be more along the lines of the aborted White River & Northern VII. The difference this time would be that I knew what I was getting into, and had options should I hit any dead-ends (other than my own, that is).
Planning started on 10 March 2020 with a quick pencil sketch (above), which was then transcribed into AnyRail for proper track geometry rendering (below). It's a simple point-to-point for the most visual drama with the least crowding. I tried to achieve continuous running, but it just created too many visual compromises. Note, too, that the final rendering is flipped from the original sketch because of the way the Shay faced.
Subsequent to the above "final" plan, on 31 March 2020 I decided to expand the layout. By adding four inches along the front edge, I could include just a token bit of a New Hampshire town, which would give me an opportunity to do more modeling.
And subsequent to that change, on 6 April 2020 I modified the track plan to improve the view of the engine facility by flipping the enginehouse around. A ripple effect caused many other changes.
In fact, revisions still continue, with another track plan change on 27 July 2020 to add a runaround at Bearcamp Springs. This required building two and a half new turnouts. (Note that dashed lines represent abandoned track, not hidden track.)
But then Hurricane Isaias hit on 4 August 2020, and during five days of blackout I made a great many more changes to the layout. Indeed, I've been asked what's left on the layout that I haven't changed. This is it:
One of the last changes I made was to move the temporal setting from the 1930s/40s to 1959, the first year I visited New Hampshire. This gave me more latitude with the things I wanted to model.
Location, Location, Location
“There is time. There are returns. To go is to return.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
This layout is returning me to a very early place for me personally—much earlier, in fact, than the Black River & Western would have. Since the age of four, I'd spent nearly twenty summers (and lots of other vacations) in New Hampshire, and setting the layout squarely in that locale has removed me from classic Northeastern urban industrial—my modeling "home" for many decades—and pulled me all the way back to my childhood. The layout's temporal setting of 1959 was not arbitrary; that was the year my family began vacationing in New Hampshire, which eventually became a lifesaving event—literally.
Slides I took of our summer home, circa 1972. Above is the cabin; it sits on the shore of Bearcamp Pond, near the headwaters of the Bearcamp River. Below is the view from the porch; the peak in the distance is Mount Chocorua. Had I not been totally screwed over by my father, I'd be living there right now, having rebuilt the cabin for year-round use.
But being my last layout also adds a whole host of layers to its raison d'être. Will it be my "best," or some kind of "masterwork?" No, far from it, nor had I planned it to be; it's simply my last artistic expression in a hobby I've enjoyed almost as long as I've been breathing. As such, my goal is to enjoy myself as much as possible given less than ten square feet of layout space, and based on past experience, it would be enough for me, for now, under the circumstances. If I live long enough to finish it, I'm sure I'll find ways to tinker with it for however long I have left on Planet Earth.