When I designed this layout I wanted to loosely base it on the Western Maryland operations in the vicinity of Bowest Yard near Connellsville, PA. That would give me the opportunity to interchange with the P&WV (later N&W w/NKP power run through), the P&LE, B&O and Pennsylvania RR. The layout has a four track ‘hidden staging’ below the modeled yard which comes up on the main portion of the layout from a tunnel portal. It then runs up, around and over with a diverging route up to the modeled yard. For ‘continuous run’ the line also curves back down and around in a simple over/under figure eight. The yard has two double ended arrival departure tracks and four double ended yard tracks, one of which is the runner and serves as the lead to the four track engine facility. Two engine tracks run into the shop building with two more to a fuel rack in front. Another long track serves both as a sand, diesel and supplies track and a caboose track.

Operationally, trains run up from staging and around up to the yard where they typically change power & caboose. Then they run back down to the staging yard. Several manifests swap blocks in the yard in addition to power and there’s a set of empty and loaded coal trains that cycle in and out of the yard. A local turn runs from the yard to the modeled industries on the layout and back to the yard. At this point, operations are fairly primitive as I have considerable work ahead to add car cards, etc. to formalize it enough for operating sessions.

This layout was originally built to maximize space available in a spare bedroom, but I’ve since moved to a different house where I was able to successfully set it up in the basement. This provides me with some new opportunities for future expansion, although having a young family now has put those plans on hold for the time being.