James River Branch: False Start

False Start

Conceived in the fall of 2006, the James River Branch was to be a coffee table layout. The plan was to replace the table in the living room with a Z scale railroad under glass. So, I measured the existing table and set about designing a plan to fit.

Regular visitors to this website will recall that I was fairly far along with the layout: the track was laid and wired, trains were running, structures were under construction, and the scenery was finished in some areas. What happened that would cause me to abandon it?

Well, several things about that layout had been bothering me all along, and some issues were not going to go away no matter what I did. One of the biggest problems: it was too big. While it matched the size of the coffee table it was intended to replace, that table was larger than I'd realized. The point really hit home one afternoon when I moved the layout outdoors for some photography; it was a royal pain tussling it around and setting it up.

In my rush to get the project started, I'd overlooked the fact that it was more important for the layout to be portable than to match the arbitrary dimensions of a piece of furniture.

Other things were bothering me as well. To get the track laid as quickly as possible, I'd used Micro-Trains flex track throughout. But as I photographed the layout's construction progress for the website, I found that the track's bulky appearance was objectionable.

Also, to maintain the swift pace of construction, I threw together a deck truss bridge from N scale structure kit scraps. Every time I laid eyes on the finished bridge, I cringed. And because of the way it was built, it could not be replaced without tearing the whole thing out, along with quite a bit of track.

Ultimately, I'd compromised the layout's appearance by trying to build it as quickly as possible. I might have been able to tear up the visible stretches of track and hand-lay it, and replace that embarrassing bridge in the process. But I was never going to be able to shrink the whole layout.

Thus, on the evening of 5 July 2007, I came to the inescapable conclusion that I had to start over. I would never be satisfied with the layout if I continued working on it. With nothing worth preserving except the plate girder bridge parts, it was all gone in a matter of minutes.

At 27 by 48 inches, the James River Branch was too big for a small layout.

The flex track was far too bulky to look realistic, even after painting.

One of my biggest embarrassments: the hokey deck truss span.

I had to make a lot more rock castings than I'd counted on.

The town of Crooked Creek went through several major design revisions.

A few square inches of greenery was the last work done on the layout.