In late July 2004, trains began rolling on the new layout. This is a look at the new layout and the work that has gone into it so far. I'll be adding pictures of the construction and progress when I get time. Also, you can view my webcam, which I will have on whenever possible when I'm working on the layout or running trains.

Layout at a glance
Name:	Wagner Lines RR
Scale:	HO (1:87)
Size:	Main oval is 12 X 17.5 feet Cleveland penninsula is 1.5 X 12 feet Columbus penninsula is 1.5 X 10 feet
Prototype:	Conrail, Norfolk Southern, CSX. Based on the former Conrail Chicago-Pittsburgh mainline through Mansfield with a fictional Cleveland-Columbus route crossing it on the east side of town.
Locale:	Mansfield in north-central Ohio
Era:	Mid-1970's to mid-1990's
History:	The Wagner Lines RR was originally a successful bridge route connecting Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, running somewhat parallel to the former New York Central route owned by Conrail. While on a small scale, the company prospered by hauling overflow traffic from Conrail's congested route with the increase in freight traffic. In 1990, Conrail was looking to spin off some of its trackage, retaining trackage rights over some routes. As a result of this, Wagner Lines acquired two new routes. The first was Conrail's Toledo-Columbus route. The second was the Chicago-Pittsburgh route with Conrail retaining trackage rights east of Alliance, Ohio. West of Crestline, the Chicago line was rebuilt and re-doubletracked. In the process of acquiring the new routes, Wagner Lines also got trackage rights over Norfolk Southern from Columbus to Portsmouth, Ohio and over Conrail from Columbus to Dayton/Cincinnati as well as to Charleston, West Virginia. Since the mid-1980s, Amtrak has operated trains on the Cleveland-Columbus line with their Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati service. Since acquiring the Chicago-Pittsburgh line, Amtrak has also brought the Broadway Limited back to its original route, favoring it over CSX's congested route, as well as extending the Pennsylvanian's route west to Chicago.
Style:	Linear and walk-in
Mainline Run:	44.77 feet on main oval.
Minimum Radius:	Main 1 (outside main on oval) is slightly over 34". Main 2 (inside main on oval) is 32". Yard leads for the north Mansfield yard are slightly over 36". Yard tracks in the north Mansfield yard are slightly over 36", 38", 40", and 42". The yard lead for the south Mansfield yard is just under 30". The interchange at MF Tower is a combination of 28" and 24" curves (28" at switch and 24" on rest of curve for mainline and 24" at switch and 28" on rest of curve for north yard lead).
Minimum Turnout:	Except for the curved turnout at MF Tower, all turnouts are #6 Atlas Custom-Line turnouts (code 83). The curved turnout at MF Tower is a Walthers #7 curved turnout (28" ouside radius, 24" inside radius).
Benchwork:	Sectional open-grid with two layers of 2-inch extruded foam insulation board on top for the scenery base.
Height:	48" at top of benchwork. 52" at top of scenery base.
Roadbed:	Cork roadbed
Track:	Atlas code 83 flextrack with 3-inch straight sections bridging the joints between layout sections.
Scenery:
Control:	DC cab control. Using Cat-5 network cable, I have a six-cab "power bus" going around each section of the main oval in a continuous circle and two branches at the MF Tower section (one for each penninsula). Power goes into the 6-pole rotary switches on the control panels (cab selection) and then goes through a DPDT toggle switch (on-off switch for block power). Power then goes out to the blocks. If a block traverses more than one layout section, it has a pair of feeders for each layout section that it is on allowing for power connections through the rails as well as through the power connections. Currently, four Model Rectifier Corp. Tech II Locomotion 2500 transformers control the layout. Cabs one and two are primarily used for the two mainline tracks around the main oval of the layout. Cab three has an Aristo-Craft Trains Basic Train Engineer hooked up to it to allow me to be anywhere in the basement and control it. This comes in handy when switching at the west end of the Mansfield yard and either of the staging yards. Cab four is used primarily as a backup and for switching at the east end of the Mansfield yards.
Track Diagram: Not to exact scale. Click on layout sections to enlarge in a new window with information on the layout section selected as well as information on the Sievers benchwork used.

Story Of The New Layout

      My idea for the new layout began in early 1999. I was renting the downstairs of a house at the time, and I had a large back bedroom that was being used primarily for storage. While not the best location for the layout, I wanted to build something simple that I could at least run my trains on. I envisioned an around-the-walls type of layout with two mainline tracks and a yard along the one side. I also envisioned a penninsula coming off the inside of the "oval" where a track could branch off the mainline and service an intermodal terminal or something.

      Well, February 1999 came, and I was laid off from work. With no income other than unemployment and not sure of where things were going, plans for the new layout got put on the back burner. That October, I ended up moving back home to my parents' house to keep from going broke. While there, the old layout made do, and once I got back to work in July 2000, I began revamping it so that I could have some sort of decent trackwork to run my trains on.

      A year later in July 2001, I moved into a townhouse once I got my credit cards paid off and had money saved up for the move. The new townhouse had a spare bedroom with a large storage closet. By putting everything that I could into the storage closet, I could free up enough space in the spare bedroom for the new layout.

      By that time, I had gone through a lot of my back issues of Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman, taking a lot of ideas from some of my favorite layouts that have appeared in the magazine over the years.

      Around this time, I came up with an idea for the inner penninsula of the layout. It could become a small staging yard for another route that could cross the mainline. An interchange track could allow locals to back around into the staging yard. Meanwhile, a dummy track would form the actual crossing at the junction since the route wouldn't really go anywhere but straight into the wall. It was then that I came up with the setting for the new layout (see above).

      It was also around this time that I discovered Sievers Benchwork, which would be a lifesaver in terms of saving time as well as having to buy all of the tools I would need to cut and drill lumber.

      Well, things went downhill with my new job, and in October 2001, I was again looking for work. Fortunately, I was only out of work eight weeks. My new job was about 75 minutes away, which made for a tiring daily commute. Again, plans for the new layout were put on hold. This time, I was thankful for that. I knew that I would be moving before long and didn't want to be in the middle of building the new layout and then have to move. Also, I discovered that I'd overestimated the size of my spare bedroom, and that would have resulted in the corners of my main oval on the layout being so small that the curves would have been tighter than I'd wanted with my longer autoracks and passenger cars. I didn't want to get stuck like with the old layout where I was restricted from running certain cars to only one of the mainline tracks. I wanted to be able to run my trains wherever I wanted on the new layout on any track.

      Over the course of the following spring and summer (2002), I began looking for a new place to live closer to my job, not wanting to move in the middle of winter in the cold and snow. The places I looked at however weren't what I was needing. They were either smaller than what I would need (in terms of both space for the layout and living space) or they weren't laid out in a good way (one place had the furnace and drain pipes in the middle of the basement, which would be in the way of trying to put in a layout.

      In September 2002, I found my current home: a 2-bedroom townhouse with a full basement. While the location of the furnace and water heater would limit the size of the layout, I would still be able to build a decent-sized layout without filling the entire basement.

      Before long, I was moved, and once the unpacking was done, plans were back underway for the new layout. I realized that in addition to the inner penninsula of the layout, I could add a second penninsula straight across from the inner one, which would add a second staging yard and give me a fully functional 4-way interchange.

      This time, I thoroughly planned everything for the layout. I completely measured every part of the basement. I began buying my benchwork in early 2003 and also put down carpetting on the floor of the basement where the main part of the basement would be located. I purchased a pair of turnouts and made photocopies of them, cutting them out to piece together to mock up different track arrangements to try. I also got some graphing paper and made scale mockups of each layout section, planning not only the track but the wiring for each section of the layout.

      By the summer and fall of 2003, the benchwork was done. I put in fluorescent lights in the basement, which really lit up my layout (much better than the two single bulbs that were originally the only light down there. I then began work on putting down the extruded foam insulation board scenery base, finishing that by the end of the year.

      Once the scenery base was down, I then began work on the control panels and wiring. With 14 contacts on each of the rotary switches, I became a bit of an expert a soldering wires. I then got the control panels up and installed the power bus that would go around to each section of the main part of the layout and branch out to the control panels on the two penninsulas.

      With the main part of the wiring done, I then began purchasing the track, cork roadbed, spikes, etc. that I needed. Trackwork began at the crossovers and yard lead at the east end of the Mansfield yards and progressed around the corner to the interchange at MF Tower. From there, I worked on around the layout in the same direction, hooking up the track feeders to the control panels as well as the electrical jumpers between the layout sections as I went. By the end of July 2004, both mainlines for the Chicago-Pittsburgh main were complete as well as one of the four tracks for the north Mansfield yard.

      Work temporarily stopped as I began saving up money to buy more track for the remainder of the layout.

      On Monday, November the 29th, my townhouse was broken into. A local teenager (and quite possibly an accomplice) were going on a crime spree in my neighborhood breaking into homes while people were at work. In my case, they broke my basement window, and whoever came through the window came in feet-first on top of what was to be the Cleveland staging yard. I came home to find my living room and kitchen a mess. While waiting for the police, my first thought was the basement, thinking for sure that everything would be destroyed in the thief (or thieves) search for items to steal. Amazingly, other than a couple light foot prints in the scenery base and the broken glass, nothing had been touched in the basement. Somehow, he'd managed to find his way under the layout and completely passed the cases full of trains as well as my power tools and other equipment. The kid was arrested about three weeks afterwards, but none of the items stolen from my place were recovered.

      In early 2005, I again began work on completing my trackwork, finishing both of the Mansfield yards. By that May, I vacuumed off the surface of what was to be the Cleveland staging yard, picking shards of broken glass out of the foam board and washing off as much of the fingerprint dust that I could. Soon afterwards, the Cleveland yard was done.

      Around that time, I purchased two Model Rectifier Corp. Tech II Locomotion 2500 transformers, expanding the number of cabs for controlling my trains to four. I also got an Aristo-Craft Trains Basic Train Engineer and hooked it up to one of the new transformers, allowing me to be anywhere in the basement and control a train.

      Soon afterwards, I completed the Columbus staging yard.

      In November 2005, I began going back and replacing the solid electrical jumpers between the layout sections with plugs I made out of computer power splitters. Now, when I need to take the layout appart, I can simply unplug the wiring rather than having to undo any screws on the terminal strips.

      That's where the layout is now. All track and wiring is completed, and I'm just enjoying running my trains to check for any problems that need weeded out before I start on the scenery, a lesson learned from my last layout. I'm also working on getting a car forwarding system in place to make operations even more fun.

      I'll post more updates as work progresses.

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