The White River and Northern Model Railroad: Chapter 5

	The N Scale

	Model Railroad

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Chapter 5: WR&N Version III

The giant floating steel doughnut

Purchased in 1991, my next home was a small two-bedroom condo. Since I was living alone, the 10 x 11 foot second bedroom provided the perfect hobby room. Within a couple of months of moving in, plans for a new layout were drawn up. I had by then lost interest in modeling a small period logging line, but I was spoiled by the opportunity the previous layout offered to run almost any kind of train I fancied—steam, diesel, freight, passenger, ancient, modern. How could I possibly pull this off in a fraction of the space I once had?

The answer had been staring me in the face for as long as I'd been in the hobby. The Black River and Western railroad not only ran steam excursions, but it also switched freight for some local industries, and interchanged with Conrail. My answer! The new White River and Northern would be patterned after its quasi-namesake: a combination tourist line and local freight handler.

The super-simple track plan consisted of two lines, the WR&N and Conrail, both of which circled the doughnut. The WR&N dominated the layout, while Conrail's double-track main was only visible for the short stretch where it interchanged with the WR&N. This allowed for three continuously-running trains. Yes, this is probably way too close to the circle-under-the-Christmas-tree setup for most modelers' taste, but I'll be very honest: I have never been operations-oriented. I just love to watch trains run.

Structurally, it was my most singular layout design to date. Imagine a giant, ten-foot-diameter doughnut suspended from the ceiling on a counterweighted cable system. Standing beneath the "doughnut hole" as the layout was lowered, one would then be immersed in a continuous, perfectly seamless, 360-degree model panorama. It was kind of a full-circle (pardon the pun) return to the first WR&N, only turned inside out.

One catch—it was not a layout suited for crowds of visitors, as the viewing space could accommodate three people at most. But, on the plus side, the layout could be positioned at any height down to three feet off the floor, so it could be viewed at eye-level regardless of a person's stature, or even whether they were standing or seated. The benchwork itself was a complete departure from anything known at the time. Assembled entirely from steel two-by-fours from Home Depot, it was a remarkably lightweight yet incredibly rigid structure on which to build a layout.

To the steel framework I attached two-inch thick foam insulation panels to provide the basic layout surface. Using a saber saw with a hollow-ground blade, I sliced up more foam insulation to create the subroadbed. This might have created a tracklaying challenge were it not for the double-stick foam tape system I'd developed for the previous layout, a process that allowed me to lay track on virtually any smooth, clean surface. Track was Railcraft Code 55 flex for the Conrail mainline, and Railcraft Code 40 flex with handlaid turnouts for the WR&N. Clinics detail my first two turnout projects, the Handlaid Code 40 Turnout and the Handlaid Code 40 Crossover. I'd also begun building structures, including the Laube Volunteer Fire Company.

There was just one problem: the backdrop. It had to be circular, seamless, and able to extend and contract as the layout was lowered and raised. I tried all sorts of tricks, from soft sky-colored fabrics to giant painted foamcore sectional tubes. Nothing worked. Stumped, I stopped construction, and the barely-started layout hung idly from the ceiling for the next year.

Eventually I remarried, and while my new wife didn't object to the crazy-looking contraption hanging in the second bedroom, she was a little disappointed that there was nothing much to see. After another a year of zero progress and remarks like, "Do you ever finish anything?" and "Will I ever get to see a train run?", I finally took action: the whole thing was dismantled and dropped in the dumpster. And to the drawing board I returned.

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