The layout looks better than it photographs, or maybe I am just a poor photographer. The coloring in the photos appears a little different than in person. The track is actually Atlas Code 83 Super-Flex nickel-silver rail. I don’t know if it is my fluorescent lighting, but it does look like brass in the photograph. The turnouts are Atlas Custom-Line Code 83, mostly #6, but some #4 for the sidings and coaling tower. The yard ladder and the crossovers are all #6 turnouts.
I actually use Tortoises, for the most part to control the switches. There are some manual ground throws (Caboose Industries) that are used to control the turnouts on the sidings. In that first photo, the two ground throws at the bottom of the photo control the siding with the tank cars on it and the industrial siding running parallel to the A/D (drill) track. Inside the engine servicing facility, I also use some ground throws, but the yard ladder and the crossovers are all Tortoise controlled, and the Tortoises are activated by DPDT switches on the control panel visible at the top of the photo. Those little black buggers that you see next to each turnout in the yard are dwarf signals (Tomar Industries).
For the most part, I don’t have any reach issues since the depth is no more than 36" as seen in the second photo. In the first photo, the reach is also no more than 36" on the left side except where the roundhouse is located. You can see the duckunder just before the rou
More or less. It actually sticks out almost 3 feet, but there is an
angled portion that makes the flat 30 inches or less.
The industry in the rear very end is a leather dealer , F.
Blumenthal, (leather was a big industry in Wilmington), next to it is a
Swift Meat distributor. The building in the foreground is a lumber
dealer. The track along the foreground is the team track (or “public
track” as they were called).
Here is an aerial photo from the 1930’s of the Maryland Ave area. The
railroad arcing through the picture is the PRR main line between New York
and Washington. The RDG and B&O run on either side of the PRR at ground
level. The “roundhouse” isn’t a round house, its the old car shop for
H&H, it didn’t handle locomotives, only passenger cars up to about WW1. If
you look closely to the left of the car shop and PRR, you can see several
tracks curving away to industries. The building just above the cut of
cars is the freight house and the little white building at the upper left
corner of the freight house is the W&N HQ building.The large buildings in
the lower right corner is the Blumenthal plant. Almost hidden above and
to the left of it is Lindsey Bros lumber and the Swift building. The
It really is. It was dicey at first until I got the track work right, but once I did that, it became a lot of fun.
When I first constructed this layout, the guys at the LHS wanted me to use double slips to eliminate the S-curve issues, but consecutive crossovers work fine.