Holiday update

I took a couple weeks off after the DFW Interchange but one thing that was nagging at me was the lack of staging. I remember reading that my SP&S buddy Bob Willer in Kansas City had written a short article in Model Railroad Planning a while back describing his battleship staging yard. This is portable staging yard that can be moved around as needed. I decided something similar was in order.

Starting with the 4 dominoes from the switching layout that Matt Latham and I built for the 2013 LSR convention in Irving, I started working on a staging yard ladder that takes off from the end of the layout near the Yellowstone River bridge. The staging yard track is also salvaged. I used Altas #6 switches from the old layout and Micro Engineering code 83 flex track. The old switching layout had 1/2" Homasote covering it.

A couple weeks later, another domino and more track. I wasn't working on the layout ever night like I was leading up to the DFW Interchange.

By the second week of December I had use all four dominoes and all the track from the switching layout, but a test showed is wasn't quite long enough. Oh, and I had wired the lead so that trains didn't stall out.

By Christmas, I was able to show my mom my layout progress. A lot of changes since she had seen it.

By the end of December I had added a 5th domino and had all the track in, making the staging yard 20 feet long. It will be interesting to see how I move it.