Pacific Cascade Railway

At the request of family for more open space in the family room I have downsized the layout and relocated the theme to the  rail lines in the Vancouver industrial area. Of necessity due to the large area covered by rail I am only modeling the port area. With Spring upon us and the garden calling progress on rebuilding is progressing slowly. I will still run PC Ry traffic on the layout along with SP&S, NP and GN power.

After considering my available time for modeling and the interest at the Vancouver RR club in railroads in Clark County I have decided to alter my layout design. Thursday I drove around Vancouver and took lots of pictures of the BNSF and Port Authority rails and yards; there are a lot!  Using my Anyrail CAD program I then designed an around the room modular layout, of parts of Clark County, that could be moved should the need arise. This transition will involve removing the large center benchwork of the current layout. I am still refining the final drawing but am posting the current design now. This location will allow me to run my PCRy engines plus SP&S, NP and GN trains.

Some of the rail around Vancouver

After taking the summer off for house painting, new gutters and rain barrels, and a new kitchen, I’m back to working on the layout. I’m finishing the mainline, both lower and upper loops, and then can start on the yards in Yakima and Chehalis.  Since I build my own turnouts, it’s less expensive but more time-consuming and more fun.

I’ve built interest in both the Clackamas and Vancouver RR clubs in using JMRI and the WiFi throttle. Now I just have to learn how to use JMRI for engine programming.

After a very busy spring and summer, I’m trying to get back to working on my layout. I just updated the track plan for the yards in Yakima and Chehalis, see the PCRY page. I was not happy with the previous yards in either area as neither allowed for the kind of switching I am learning about from the train clubs I attend. I also used Google maps to get an overhead view of the real Yakima yard(s) and found that there are two actual yards connected by an interchange track, like my layout now has. It’s possible that if Northern Pacific had built the line to Chehalis, the second smaller yard could have been for that line. Sometimes reality is the best guide for fiction.