Changing the Layout on Tuolumne Forks Model Railroad
Bob Brown
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Description
Tuolumne Forks is a O&3 freelanced narrow gauge logging and mining railroad. Bob Brown is the editor and publisher of the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette.This layout combines mining and logging with a tourist line. The operation follows the Lake Tahoe Railway and Navigation Company’s transport of tourists from Workshop to the Lake Tahoe Resort. The railroad is famous among narrow gauge enthusiasts like Bob Brown.
Building a model quickly may result in more mistakes along the way. Bob Brown emphasizes that it is okay to make mistakes. Tearing parts of your layout down to nothing and rebuilding is all part of the process. Sometimes a layout may have hidden tracks that are hard to clean, unreachable buildings, and messy control systems, but it is all fixable.
As long as you enjoy the process, changing your layout is a way to better enhance your Tuolumne Forks Model Railroad.
Watch more from Allen Keller’s Great Model Railroads in the Model Railroad Academy archives.
What would you change about this layout if you were starting all over? I'd change a lot. I'm very rarely super satisfied when I finish something. I've made some cardinal mistakes in this layout. Now, number one, there's too much hidden track that I can't clean without crawling down with the Bright Boy and therefore I don't clean it, and that was a serious mistake.
But the hidden track was added later for the loop effect. I also have too many areas where I can't reach. The area where The Cousin Jack Mill is, that mill is there because I can't reach up there to do anything. The mill could be built on the workbench and put into place. The town cannot easily be reached, and all the buildings are on bases that come out so I can work on 'em.
Sounds like you designed for that, though. So that's not a detriment. It's not, but I would not do this again. I would also think through my control system much more carefully on a new layout, and I think I would either build a logging railroad, or I would build a little Nevada County narrow gauge railroad, rather than trying to combine them. You've torn things out before, and you're going to change this section of the layout later.
You're not afraid to do that. Not at all. That's hard for us, most people. I build fairly rapidly, and I enjoy the building aspect of it. And here I am retiring, and I've got a 99% complete layout.
Right, so you better start tearing some of it out and redoing it. Every part of this layout has been torn out and redone except the Twin Saw Mills area, and I mean down to the track, down to the rail, every part of it at least once, and I will be taking, as soon as you're out of here, I will be taking one end of the layout out and redoing it. And that way I correct my mistakes, and I enjoy the process.
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