Construction starts

Construction Starts
  
    Some will see similarities of my track plan to the HO Cat Mountain Layout as seen in Model Railroader way back and yes I must admit I have used portions of Dave's track plans in some locations on the layout. I gathered he would know more about track arrangements of the Santa Fe than me and living so far away it would not be easy for me to ever get to this area to check it out.
    As I wanted to have as long a train as I could I looked for a location on the Santa Fe prototype that had single tracks and passing sidings. With the help of Ron I came up with the idea of using the middle division which is in Kansas and Oklahoma. I chose all of the town names off a Santa Fe map and with all of this the Santa Fe Railway Southern Division was born.
     Armed with the new track plan (probably version 5 or 6) my good friend Vic and I started to work on the walls of the shed. The walls were left open and very bare with the previous layout and I was much more focused on what I wanted this new layout to be like and so lining the walls and curving all of the corners of the backdrop was a top priority. We then set about making and fitting all of the 'L Girders' to the perimeter at a much higher height than any previous layouts I had built ( the track height is 54 inches from the floor) and I wanted a lot of space between the underside of the track base board and the 'L Girders' for wiring and deep fascia's.  We then laid in the peninsula's ensuring that we had all of the dimensions correct.

Work progressed almost every night of the week and so it did not take very long to get to the stage shown in these two images.
More next time.
Rod.