Making some decisions

Thinking over some of the questions I came up with I've decided that this will be located in the modern era. Diesels and probably somewhere in the 70s or 80s for a time frame. This will allow for some well used (i.e. weathered and rusty) older engines along with some more current equipment too. It does eliminate some of the newest (and larger) engines however this was never going to be a big enough layout to do them justice anyway. SD40's are probably the biggest I could consider with SWs and GPs being the more likely motive power choices.

While I am a fan of the IC/ICG (grew up near one of their lines that headed west through some of Chicago's suburbs) I am not going to specifically model this railroad. Ideally the layout will allow for multiple lines or at least the intersection of two lines allowing for a little more variety.

I used to model in N however my interest in weathering and detailing coupled with my not so young anymore eyes and hands mostly left me frustrated. Thanks to Ebay I was able to sell the N stuff at a fair price and picked up a few HO cars to see if it would be any easier. It was. Given that HO has the widest selection and is still easy for me to work with I think I'll stick with HO.

One of the stated goals of the PDPL is to be a functional layout. This means operating it. Round and round won't be good enough... there will have to be some switching involved too. The actual design is stil in progress but with some variety in switching I think a fairly urban setting is going to be best. A wilderness setting, to me, means pretty much single industries. Think Mining or Logging. Rural is probably going to be the same... Grain Silos. While Urban could easily see industries served by box cars, flats, tanks and hoppers all in a relatively small area.

For now the DC/DCC debate will be shelved. I like the idea of DCC but unless a design can accomodate multiple engines then it might be money spent that doesn't need to be as I have a perfectly fine DC power pack right now.

Track type (brand, code, hand laying, etc.) will be settled later too.

The last big requirement is portability. What is considered portable? Where am I going to take it? or put it? While I might go to train shows or other exhibits with it in the future that isn't part of the current plan. However, if it is portable then there is no reason it couldn't be taken somewhere. Fitting in the car means that it would probably have to be stackable and in sections no longer than 4 feet.

When I'm not using it, I plan on putting it away where the cats can't have their way with it. A readily available closet would give me about 4' in width and up to 5' in height and a little less than 2' in depth to work with.

So possible options include a single 4' x 20", a couple of 5' x 20" (stood on end in the closet when stored), three 4' x 20" sections, three 5' x 20", two or three 3' x 20", etc. Being able to take it somewhere in the car will have to be decided as that would eliminate the 5' options.

I guess it's time to try to find a plan (or create one) that fits into one of those size combinations. Essentially somewhere between 4' and 15' in length and 15"-20" in depth. With a limit of 3 sections they would have to be arranged in a triangle if I wanted continous running as 20"... maybe even stretched to 22" still results in less than an 11" radius curve. Short of using Track Mobiles as my motive power 11" is just not going to work for a continous layout.