Although I am railroads fan for very long time, I started to work on my first layout some 13 years ago (2001), when I used a small room in the attic to build my empire. From a modeling and functionality point of view, the layout was nothing to write home about, I was only beggining to learn about layout making. Rather sooner than later I found out that my views and attitudes evolved quite a bit, and instead of making corrections on that small layout, I decide that I would prefer to build a completelly new layout, in the »bigger is better« style.

 

A friend of mine and teammate, Darko Pahic made the track plan for the new layout, Wausau & Western - a MILW Subsidiary. We started to build it some 6 years ago (2007). While Darko takes care for the technical aspect of the layout (building the benchwork and electronics), my job is the scenery and the final appearance.

 

For a layout few times larger than the previous one I needed a new room for it. The layout home is the garage, modified into a room. The frame was made from 11/16" (18mm) beech plywood while for the top plate we've used 8/16" (12mm) plywood. The tracks are layed on 3/16” (5mm) thick Styrodur® and fixed with Liquid Nails compatible glue. Most of the yard turnouts are powered with Tortoise motors. The rest of them are hand controlled.

In the future all of the Tortoise powered turnouts will be controlled through the computer – a work still waiting to be done.

 

The trains are operated with Uros Kunaver's LocPanel computer program (the site is only in slovenian language at the moment). It is quite unique program offering the ultimate reality. It works through Loconet and allows genuinely realistic operation of the trains. The power and the brakes are independent, just like with real locomotives. The both features are controlled through the encoders on the handheld DCC controllers (Digitrax DT400 in my case). The program is running in the background on the PC, and from the power and brakes settings constantly calculates the forces, accelerations, axel amount, horse power, amount of cars pulled and the weight of the cargo (in percentage) – all that inside the laws of physics.

 

To achieve that, every locomotive need two separate DCC decoders, one for the motor controll, and one for the sound. I am using Zimo motor decoders and Soundtraxx DSX sound decoders which are both controlled independently. That way, when the engineer goes down with the power to idle, the sound also goes to idle, but the train is still moving on. The program displays also the scale speed, and all of the locomotives are set to have the same speed at the same number displayed – which is quite handy when using them in consists.

 

The layout is a free lance with a fictional locale. For some reasons I choosed the mid 50's era. The main railroad is the Milwaukee Road, but for the sake of diversity it crosses with Union Pacific. The freight station (Wassau Yard) with its passenger terminal is partly built as a replica of the real station from Wausau, WI, adopted and modified to the basic idea of the layout (and to the real estate available, obviously).

The station yard occupies almost the entire right hand side of the layout, while on the left there is my Lakeside Valley, which suppose to represent the West Coast, probably somewhere in the state of Washington.

From the Wausau Yard the line takes to two hidden yards. The connection to the East Station is via large helix. The East yard is in fact a reverse loop, making the trains to go back to the helix and further on through the Wausau Yard and then to the West Station, another hidden yard. That part of the layout is rather industrialized (the Cement Industry, Oil Co., Lakeside Fish etc.) and there is also a small passenger terminal, the Lakeside Valley Station.

At the Wast hidden yard there is an equal reverse loop, as same as at the East Station.

We have a 30mph general speed limit in force on the layout and 15mph on the Wausau Yard, while it is not alloed speeds above 5mph at the street running.

 

The structures on the layout are coming from very different sources, some commercial kits by Downtown Deco, Monster Modelworks, Bar Mills Models, Cornerstone, American Model Builders, Blair Line, Model Tech Studios, Campbell Scale Models, Sheepscot Scale Products, Woodland Scenics Scene Kits, while many others are built from scratch (click here).

As a base for the scenery I've used interlaced lines of corrugated cardboard. A masking tape is covering all that net, which I've painted with a wall latex paint in some earthly color. On top of it there is a layer of a plaster, cement and vermiculite mix, again painted with the same paint. I finished the top coat with Zip Texture technique. For terrain and landscape finishing I'm  using various products by  Woodland Scenics, Silhouette, Scenics Express, Welberg Scenery, Polak Model, ​Lars op 't Hof Scenery ...

 

The trees are mainly home made, using different techniques. Many trees are made with balsa and caspia, the volume trees are made with bottlebrush technique, and some are made with combination of both techniques.

 

Of course, the layout is not finished yet (is there any?), there is a lot of work in front of me with the scenery, also the electronic part is not over yet. The main line is fixed but there may be some changes on the side lines.

 

There are regular operating sessions on the layout, usually three or four operators. With a full schedule it takes 4 hours to complete a session – a lot of work, obviously.