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East Rail
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The East Rail layout represents, in model form, the Miami industrial rail scene as viewed through my own personal lens. In building the railroad my emphasis was on capturing a specific mood. A mood characterized by heat, faded pastels, and salsa culture dropped onto the canvas of railroading.
An ever present element of our American culture is to equate quality with how big or how expensive something is. Certainly this carries over into model railroading where the large size of a layout in, and of itself, seems to attach a certain cachet. I would take the opposing view and say that the beauty of our hobby is that the quality of the end result is totally unrelated to overall dimensions or the amount spent. It is a hobby where the motivated teenager, recent retiree, or starving college student can stand on equal ground with the well healed.
While I had ample floor space for a much larger layout, I intentionally kept the East Rail project small. This allowed a much more focused effort. I was able to spend time detailing scenes and yet still have a reasonable chance of completing the project in a realistic time frame. A minimalist approach was taken when it came to the mechanical end. All turnouts are thrown by flipping the points with ones finger tips. A wireless DCC system keeps wiring to a minimum. A look at the fascia will reveal no controls or toggles beyond the DCC command center. As with the prototype, all of the turnouts, save one, are oriented in the same direction thereby negating the need for space eating run around tracks.
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