I have settled on a track plan for the new Hermitage Road layout. Here is a view, below, of the original Hermitage Road track plan under construction in March 2020. It was pretty simple. Here is the revision I have been planning up until a few weeks ago. It is similar to the first revision I posted last time: I was a little unhappy with this track plan. It maximized the same space, but I didn’t like how everything was square with perpendicular angles. There was no flow. The advantage of building the layout perfectly square with the front fascia … Continue reading No. 183: Rebuilding Hermitage Road, Pt. 3 – Laying Track

February and March have been good months of work on the new Hermitage Road layout. Here’s a mock up of one of two track plans I’ve developed. The layout is 7-1/2 feet long and 18-inches wide. I have another arrangement that I also like, but there’s no rush to make the decision and I’m letting the plans simmer for a while. I’ll share the other plan on the next post, but it looks much like this one with a twist. The reality is there’s not much room to do too much else other than something like this. Like the original … Continue reading No. 181: Rebuilding Hermitage Road, Pt. 2

Above: Here’s the Hermitage Road layout as of today. Most of my little Hermitage Road layout was planned around a single industrial track behind the Seaboard’s Hermitage Yard locomotive shops in Richmond, Virginia. Here’s a Sanborn view, below. That one track had the Alcatraz Co. (paint, varnish and asphalt–what a combination) and the Richmond Cinder Block Co. of Richmond. I felt those two companies would provide opportunities to use box and tank cars (Alcatraz) and cement, gondola, hopper and box cars (Cinder Block Co.). I felt that if I was building a small layout I needed to incorporate as much … Continue reading No. 170: Modeling The Sitterding, Carneal & Davis Construction Co.

Since August I’ve been working on freight cars and finishing the traverse table for the layout.  I’m still working on some of the unfinished freight car projects, but I’m devoting October to getting the layout back in operation and completing layout structures. One of the more visually interesting customers on the layout is the Hermitage Coal Co. As you can see below, Hermitage Coal was a small dealer with a fenced property on a shared siding. There are no know photos of Hermitage Coal Co. Here’s the look I’m after, below–a local coal dealer with piles of different grades of … Continue reading No. 165: Modeling the Hermitage Coal Company