Track Laid on Engine House Module

So far, over 1200 ties, 1000 Spikes, and 100 feet of rail used on this first module. I’m out of spikes, so there is a bit more work to do on the car repair track.

There is a lot of track in this small area, but there is no traditional type yard. I wonder how they organized loading of stores onto appropriate cars and then made up the trains. After all, there was something like 100 cars and 10 or12 locomotives on the City Point and Army Line Railroad.

You can see where I pulled up and relocated the car repair track on the left side of the image. There may be other places where track may be tweaked, but I don’t expect to do any other major relocations. The buildings are paper and card stock mockups and will be replaced with custom made models.

Next steps are to wire the track and switches and make sure that the trains can negotiate this track without too much trouble. After that I’ll start on structures and build the car repair shop. I haven’t decided what to use for ballast or when to place it.

Here is a somewhat similar historic view taken before the car repair shed and turntable were built. The image was probably taken in October, 1864. My layout is designed to replicate late March, 1865 and a lot of things changed between those dates.

Engine House from Cut