New Life to an Old Model Railroad

Okay, it's not that old of a model railroad.  It's the Lakes Region Model Railroad, which my friend Chris and I built 2 years ago when we were living in Laconia.  It is a modular 4x10 railroad that depicts downtown Laconia on one side and Weirs Beach on the other side.  There is also a 5 foot, 4 track staging yard that attaches to the Laconia side.  We built it in the garage of the house I was living in, which was not heated.  When I moved out, the railroad came to Nashua with me, and I didn't have a place to set it up so it stayed in my shed for almost 2 years.

Chris recently found a place to set up the railroad, and we moved it on Friday.  We had to make repairs to the legs, so we only set up half of it for now.  The backdrop also needs to be painted still, so once we do set up both halves, they will not be put together at first.

The railroad is getting a few big changes.  First, we are redoing the track work.  Originally, we had code 100 track on Woodland Scenics foam roadbed.  This worked great at first, but the cold weather had a bad impact on the track, which was not held in place securely due to the foam roadbed.  We have torn up the track and we are replacing the roadbed with cork to help hold the track in place better.  Even if it is never subject to cold weather again, it is a modular layout, and the track needs to be secure for shipping purposes as well.

The second big change is we are removing the grades.  The Weirs Beach section was one inch higher than the Laconia section because we needed two inches of foam on Weirs Beach so we could model the lake, but we didn't want to put that much foam down on the Laconia section.  This meant we had to put in a grade on the curve, and it has been nothing but a headache.  When we set up the Weirs Beach section, we will chop one inch off the legs so it is level with Laconia, and the grade has already been removed.

The third, and probably the biggest, change is the power.  The layout was originally powered with a MRC Prodigy Express DCC system that is now under my home layout.  Chris has a Digitrax Zephyr system on his layout, and neither of us can afford a new system for this layout.  Instead, we are going to go old-school and wire this layout to run on DC block control.  We still have to work out the details, but we are basically building a DC system with two walkaround throttles from scratch.  You can expect a blog post about that once it is all figured out.

It's nice to be able to work on this layout again.  We never finished it 2 years ago, and We have both been trying to find a place to set it up for 2 years.  The idea behind this layout was to build something that is portable, cheap, well detailed, and reliable.  So far, it has lived up to those expectations.