Tomorrow I begin saying farewell to an old friend...the Annapolis, Alexandria, Charleston and Poulsbo Railroad...as we get ready to relocate from Alexandria to the Northern Neck of Virginia. My 13' by 23' layout was my first attempt at a large layout...and took over one-half of our two car garage in 1999.
It's a layout full of memories, particularly running it with my kids and my friends. My son, as a young teenager, discovered that the 1/48 scale of O gauge matched the 1/48 scale of Warhammer gaming pieces...he and his friends developed a complicated method of using my trains to randomly determine the starting point for their armies on the layout-cum-gameboard. I could come out and see Orcs and Elves in house-to-house fighting through the layout's towns! (I drew the line at placing Warhammer artillery in my Plasticville hospital and churches).
There were three zones on the layout...my youngest daughter had one zone to help design; my son, the second zone; and my two older daughters, the third.
I learned some lessons from this layout...
- Old O-31 track is not the best track to use on an extended layout, unless you clean the **** out of it
- Loop electrical buses (one for each of the main lines, the ground loop, and several accessory loops) works great, but only if you neatly organize the lines to be tight up against the bottom of the tables...I didn't, and have paid the price ever since
- Z Transformers work great as long as you calculate the electric load up front, and don't turn them into space heaters
- Nineteen O-31 switches carry a significant maintenance overhead with them (I was smart enough, at least, to power them from an auxiliary circuit vice track power)
Final thought...two years ago at a Christmas gathering, I mentioned that I was thinking of dismantling the layout and designing a new one. I immediately had four expressionless sets of eyes (my son and my three daughters) focused like lasers on me. Finally, one of them said, "you can't do that...we grew up with that layout!"
I guess I succeeded.
An O-gauge layout will rise again at our new house on the Northern Neck (ironic, since the NN never (to this day) has had a real railroad built on it)...but the AAC&P will always have a place in my heart.
John
