Elizabeth & Port Reading

Layout Summary

Setting:

New Jersey urban industrial, 1970s-80s

Scale:

N

Size:

15 by 36 inches

Track:

Tomix Fine Track

Control:

homemade PWM

Benchwork:

Gatorfoam over extruded foam insulation

Scenery:

Sculptamold over extruded foam insulation

Year:

2017

Status:

~20% complete

Disposition:

new owner

Literally a Dream Layout

True story: I awoke one morning in the midst of a startlingly vivid dream in which I was building a layout. It was a figure-eight designed in a way to disguise the simple plan in an intriguing way: create what looks like a straight mainline running parallel to a waterway, with sidings branching off either side that just happen to be connected via a short tunnel. So I fired up my laptop and started madly sketching so as to retain as much of the quickly-fading memory as I could.

Strangely enough, the results seemed feasible, so I raided my storage container for whatever I could use to build the layout. My initial sketch utilized Atlas Code 55 track, but I didn't have enough turnouts. Then I discovered a cache of Tomix Fine Track left over from a previous project, and bingo: the Elizabeth and Port Reading came to life.

In short order I had the base built and the track laid. I'd started looking for building kits to bash when I fell into a funk, as I'm prone to do, and work ground to a sudden halt. Years later, the layout was sold as-is.

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