When I started to plan for this track, it was a couple of factors that I had to solve, and a number of features that I wished to have on the railroad
- I must have a place for my desks in the room, and they need to be quite big because I do not only work with the locomotives and build plastic kits, I also design circuit boards, create electronic solutions, scratch-built buildings and other things, paint / airbrush stuff and so on. So I needed the desk to be at least 240 cm long. (Now when they are in place, I would say 300 cm. 240 is a bit to small to be honest)
- The track must be high enough to not break your back every time you will be under the tables and connect cables. And there will be alot of cables, believe me!
- A hidden yard must be planned from the start, so I dont havt to push it in afterwards as I needed on my old railroad
- A major port for container and bulk is desired
- At least two larger citys
- The track must be built in segments so if I have to, I can dismantle it and move it to another destination. Difficult is quite okay, but possible. What I dont want is to cut the rails, or cut the cables, cut the table, etc. to dismantle it.
- DCC and automatic operation from TrainController seems hardly worth saying, but obviously this was also a requirement.
In retrospect, I can say I’ve got everything I wanted. There have been many tracks plans back and forth to find the one that suits me best. But I’m very happy with the one that I ended up with
Regarding the desire to have a large desk to work on, together with the desire to have the railroad high up so it was easy to access all the cables and connection went hand in hand. I simply put the tables in place. Mounted a shelf so I got a place for all the instruments etc. and then put my computer and screen on the desk. Then, I put a couple of consoles and a frame on the consoles that went over everything on the desk. I then measured the height from the floor to the frame. As this was a pretty good height I simply built the raiload at that height. The result is that the raiload runs just above the table. Practically when I could attach small fluorescent lights on the underside of the frame and thus get good lighting to my desk.[:]