Its Operational ! Yeah !!

Well Little Hoot is now operational after a bunch of thinking, bad mouthing, head banging, and that was just figuring out the logistics of it all.  I even made up four couplete senerio's for each of the eleven cars that I have for Little Hoot.  I ran two complete senerio's over the weekend and discovered that if you run them complete you had better have between three and four hours to devote to it.  Using a Random Generator to make up each step in the possible senerio for each car was mind boggleing but I think it puts on a true to life possibility for each car.  If you consider that each car works its own senerio independantly from the other cars you can generate over 100 different switchlists.  When you remember that Little Hoot is a layout only 24" by 96" and running eleven cars during a run can really be a challenge to operate.  I really think that I'll wear out Little Hoot long before it gets boring.

Hootersville has changed again

Well I've been working on the layout planning again and I've come up with a design that I have the track for.  I'm calling it " Little Hoot" since its not the full layout that I want to build, but it will do until I have the track, switches and everything else I need.  Little Hoot is designed to be a spur off the main line of Hootersville supporting the Happy Moose Winery.

On the left side will be the Incoming cars, from the bottom up the tracks are design to work as follows:  Track "A" will be a Storage track, but will be used for incoming fruit inspection, a building and a ramp will be placed between the two bottom tracks .  The next track up will be for incoming car storage.  Tracks "C" & "D" will be where all the action takes place as these will be the main recieving and shipping tracks for the winery itself.  Track "E" will be the Icing Track.  Since this railway is dated late 1950's to early 1960's refrigerated cars were still not commonly used so I need a track to load the Ice needed to keep the product cold while heading to market.  On this layout I will need several buildings to make things go.  I see the need for a "Yard Shed" where the engineers get there orders, an Incoming Fruit Inspection Building and Ramp, a "Process Building" for the Winery, and an Ice House & Platform. I also plan on having to the left of the switches the outskirts of Hootersville the town.  Obviously I've seen a lot in this small layout but I'm excited about the future of it.  I will be making a video shortly of what Little Hoot looks like in reality instead of just drawings.  Stay tuned

Its finally Here

Well my DCC kit finally arrived and man I'm glad, taking out all the parts got me wondering what I'd gotten myself into.  I recieved four loco's and eight assorted freight cars and two cabooses.  I've been looking through my catalogs and figured the Hooterville layout has around $400.00 worth of just switches in the plan!  Well I'm committed to the plan but just not today.  I put together some of the track that I got with my kit and came up with this layout that I call Hootersville II

I still have 7 pieces of curved track and 3 straight sections but without any additional switches I'm stuck right now.  I will start to scenic this but I'm limited due to this being a portable ( on 2 - 4'ft. tables ).  Everything has to be able to be removed and put away for the moment.  This situation will be changing in the next few weeks as I'm building a garden shed for the wife's gardening stuff.

One question I'll ask you all, I'm looking at this layout supporting a Winery but I'm stuck on how to run operations on this layout right now............. any ideas????

I'm waiting

Well I'm waiting for my first DCC train set to arrive, I have a couple of DCC locomotives that I used to run on a club layout but due my past work schedule and now a lack of employment I've not been able to use them for a while.  While cruising Ebay the other day I stumbled across a brand new DCC train set for a price I couldn't turn down, about 1/3 price of new, its a Bachmann DCC set but after research I found that I can use my existing Loco's on it so it might not be fancy but I can use my equipment again.  Now if the UPS guy would deliver it!

 Howdy folks,

Well I've been dreaming again and planning, trying to decide where to put things on the layout.  The snow is finally starting to melt which will soon allow me to go to Lowes and buy some of the building materials that I will need to make Hootersville a reality.  I've uploaded a video to show some of the buildings that I've been working on over the past several months I would guess there is approx. 20 of them.  Not all of them are going to appear on the layout and I'm sure that as my ideas grow my needs for what goes on the layout will change but for now this is what I have.

I recieved a  message yesterday that someone wanted to use my track plan as a part of their layout which I thought was neet, maybe one thing I should do is to post a few pictures of what the layout could have looked like.  I kept finding layouts that I sort of wanted until I picked each one of them apart until I came up with the current one.  Its been a great adventure so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXonCeWfc8

Episode 2

Well being stuck in the snow does have its advantages, you get to work on your layout plans more.  I was looking at my plans when I started to see areas that I think I would like to have some sort of scenery.  The areas in blue are where I see either Commerical, Industrial, or Housing development.

This layout is in HO scale and measures 2'wide and 8' long.  The gridlines are 6''. The Operator side is between area "A" "F" & "E".  I decided where the Mainline of track was assigned so that sometime in the future if I wanted to expand the layout I would have an exit on both sides of the layout.  Until then this will be the area where the Arrivals and Departures would occur.

I must admit its exciting to see this layout going from a simple hand-made drawing on paper to what I see today.  One thing I want to suggest, if you see something or have an idea post it up on the blog.  Yes this is my dream layout but I'm brand new to building a layout so all ideas are welcome.

Here is my layout plan

Howdy folks,

Well I've actually been working on the design of this layout for more than a month but I finally put it into my anyrail program. This is an HO scale layout measuring 2' wide by 8' long. I will be using code 83 track and No.4 turnouts.  This will be a scenic'd layout featuring switching.  My goal is for this layout to be operations not a "timesaver" type of puzzle.  On the left side will be pulpwood yard a two track supply track for Pulpwood Paper Products.  On the right side of the layout is the Happy Moose Winery Yard or at least that is the names that I have given the yards so far.  The layout is based in the town of Hootersville, Oklahoma governed by Mayor Hoot (whence the name of the town).  Stay tuned