Catasauqua

There is a lot of undeveloped real estate on the left side of the layout. One way I thought to utilize this space was The Eastern Electric. I couldn't figure a reasonable way for the steam road to get across the mainline so I thought the trolley line would be good idea. I even thought I could make it a freight carrier with steeplecab motor units running in the street. I would interchange with the mainline or maybe even cross the mains to interchange with the Average Eastern. Since any bridge would require ridiculous grades and trolley lines use such grades it seemed feasible. The idea didn't seem to work the way I thought it might.

Then I remembered Catasauqua on the Lehigh Valley...

Catasauqua

The Lehigh & New England actually crosses the LV four track main at grade...

Lehigh & New England Crossing

Crossing a busy mainline must have been a nightmare in the real world, but it sure works for the layout. I added a crossing just like it to the track plan. Now the Average Eastern can access the space on the "south" side of the mainline using this very unique feature. I was able to add several industries to this side of the layout...

Average Eastern January 25th, 2014

Thinking on it, a run around track should be added on the south side of the crossing. This would allow switching the facing point sidings without running back across the mainline. Other than that I'm thinking it makes good use of an otherwise wasted space.

I'm still playing with place names. In keeping with the theme I had originally gone with synonyms for Average. That's where Quotidian comes from. I ran two other names together to get Commonstock. Alpha is named for the cement plant located there. Owertown is just bad spelling for Our Town.

There are a LOT of water courses on the layout requiring lots of bridges. This seems more "real" to me if you know what I mean/ Railroads and highways often follow rivers and streams. Many times a river has any number of feeder streams and places where two streams join to form a river. I also included a lake formed when a dam was built across the river. Here in Tennessee all the rivers were dammed for flood control and power generation during the Roosevelt  era.

This week saw the arrival of the Average Eastern's first locomotive, a Baldwin built 2-8-0. Unlike every other engine on the property, the Consolidation was purchased specifically for the short line. I've been reading that these Bachmann "Connies" are great performers. They certainly look great. I plan to keep this beauty as delivered for the most part. Not keen on wrecking another locomotive. Just some lettering changes, a light weathering and DCC...

Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0

That's all for now,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad