I don't use DCC, preferring to stick with straight DC in order to keep my costs down. At this point in time, in order to convert to DCC, I figure it would cost me several thousands of dollars to equip each engine with a decoder, not to mention a couple hundred for the rest of the equipment. For this reason, I've wired my layout into several electrical blocks each powered by a "standard" power pack. In order to avoid having a bunch of wires running around, I've resorted to attaching a power strip under the layout to plug in each power pack:
Here are a couple of "progress" shots of the portion of the layout that has been running for a couple months:
In the below image, you can see a blue building. At this point, it is still a work in progress, but it will house my railroad's company fire department. It is one of "our" ways of giving back to the community, by maintaining and operating a fire department that is fully trained and prepared to respond to a railroad-related incident, rather than relying on the local fire departments as the prototype railroads do. The office of the fire department building is currently doubling as the railroad's business office, which is convenient as we don't currently have a "real" business office building located on the layout.
This shot provides a decent view of the major elevator that will be located on what I've defined as the "branch line." You can also see our railroad MOW siding just across the branch from the elevator complex. At this point, the elevator isn't much more than a plastic silo or two, and a single-stall Pikestuff enginehouse kit, but I intend to install a facility similar to the facility in downtown Pigeon, or other, similar facilities around the Mid-west.
This is the other end of the branch. In the center of the branch is a large distribution facility. It is essentially a large rail-served warehouse facility, that then transfers the cargo to trucks. It is set up so that it can receive cargo both via boxcar and via flatcar (centerbeam and bulkhead-flats). My intent is that it is part of a regional home-improvement center's distribution network, even though the two major lumberyards in the area (Moore & Carter and Mortimer & Son) never seemed to handle the volume such a location would require. That, however, is the beauty of free-lancing: in my freelanced history of the area, a 3rd local lumber yard established itself a couple decades back and grew to become a eastern-Michigan lumberyard giant. Headquartered in Sandusky, with a major DC (distribution center) located somewhere between Sandusky and Port Huron, "Al's Lumber Supply" is the state's largest home improvement chain.
Another view of Al's DC complex:
As we're getting into the warmer season, I figure I'll be putting less and less time into the layout for a while, but it is nice to have almost all of the track work done on the layout for the time being.
Charles W.
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