Setting up the track segments was not that hard. With a track plan of 9 x 4, my 10 x 4 table space left enough room to place the KATO power packs on the far right.
I would make several modifications to the SLR both in terms of the track plan and the type of structures and scenery that the Model Railroader set up had.
First, I needed to place the KATO Suburban Passenger Station I had purchased. This was a pre-built structure based on a Japanese prototype (but not too Asian in appearance that it could not pass for the United States) that included an attached double track segment.
It would not fit well in the southern part of the layout with the yard. I found it did fit perfectly where the bridge was supposed to go in the top center of the layout. But now, where to put the bridge? I found it fit in the upper left just off center where the super-elevated curve segment ends.
I bought extra track segments to extend the yard's stub tracks as well as the two sidings. I figured the longer the sidings or yard segments, the more cars it could hold.
Next, I turned my attention to the structures on the layout. The facilities and industries you have in a model railroad layout are key: they will determine what types of freight or passenger cars you can operate beyond just "run-throughs" on the mainline. For instance, if you have a refinery, you need to invest in tank cars.
Model Railroader's SLR featured a Walthers N scale diesel shop in the center left area and a Walthers N scale furniture factory in the center right area. I had bought a KATO engine house kit to replace the bigger Walthers version, but I had no plans to use a furniture factory, which did not seem very 2014 (I expressed this dismissal on the Model Railroader online forums and promptly offender some guy who claimed that the furniture industry was a key part of the modern American economy!).
At first, I thought of replacing the furniture factory with an ethanol production facility. Ethanol production, of course, is a very modern industry. Walthers had made a series of HO scale kits of an entire ethanol production facility, but I was stunned that they had not replicated those kits for N scale.
I looked for kits that might substitute. Scratch-building was never an option in my mind. Tomytec of Japan had produced a large industrial type facility that was all pre-built but it cost over $200 from Ebay vendors out of Japan.
I decided to scrap the idea of the ethanol plant and implement a grain elevator instead. Walthers did have a N scale kit that retailed for $44.98. I wanted to avoid having to build any kits as my modeling skill is not that great, mainly as I lack the patience to assemble segments in painstaking detail. There were sellers on Ebay offering their used, built, grain elevators. I eventually found a seller who was offering a used, built-up Walthers kit grain elevator that was slightly weathered. The only downside to his model was that he had applied a "Co-Op" decal rather than the kit's ADM one. But I could paint over that. My winning bid was something like $47 and even with shipping, the final cost for a well-built model was not too far off what the unassembled kit cost directly from Walthers. This was indeed a good bit of business and now the many covered hoppers I had acquired had a facility to service them.
It was clear to me that the intermodal yard segment of the SLR was not going to hold many intermodal well cars. Even with my extensions to its track, it might hold ten Maxi-I well cars at most--just two KATO sets. I wanted some yard space for other types of freight so I decided not to put the engine house in the center left. Instead, I added a turnout to the bottom part of the track plan and ran a segment of track to the right. This fed a wye turnout that then branched into two tracks and the KATO engine house. This stretched the scope of Dewarville Yard to take into account the entire bottom half of the layout.
For the two-track segment vacated by where MR had placed its engine house, I did place a building. I was quite enamored of Imex's Railway Express Agency pre-built building. Though the REA went out of business in 1975, I imagined this building to have been restored and now used by BNSF personnel at the yard.
I did have second thoughts thought after I bought and received the REA building. The two-track segment could host small strings of varied freight cars, but maybe I should add a second industry instead? Would just having one industry get old after a while? I'm still not sure transferring the ex-engine house track to the yard was a good idea. Time will tell.
There was one building that Model Railroader featured that I did purchase--BLMA's modern yard office. Right now, i have this slated about where MR's layout has it.
The major hassle with setting up the Salt Lake Route track pack was not modifying its plan or getting accompanying buildings--it was wiring it. I would not be setting up DCC so this made my task harder.
The accompanying diagram had wiring feeds at multiple locations. To my chagrin, the "set" did not include all the required feeds. I spent quite a bit of money to get the required wiring and extension wires.
It was my intention to have one KATO power pack for each main line and one to control the industry tracks in the center of the layout as well as the track into the engine house.
The problem was that I could not easily determine what segment of wiring should go into which power pack. Google and YouTube searches did not help. Multiple posts on the MR forums did not produce the right reply. Some posted that the SLR was intended for DCC.
I had cut numerous holes to feed wiring from turnouts and track segments down under the Foamular and strung across the tables to feed the power packs (for now I would not be hooking up the turnouts). This did have the effect of causing slight rises in the otherwise flat foam boards as I was not going to drill into the plastic table tops.
One night, I decided to experiment by connecting wiring segments and running a BNSF GP38. Through this trial and error, I determined that most of the electrical feeds were UNNECESSARY for DC operation. Through proper alignment of turnouts, three power packs could run the entire layout with a fraction of the electrical wiring feeds. This helped the foam board level more.
One power pack would indeed power a mainline. My third power pack powered the track into the engine house as well as one of the center industry tracks. I realized a fourth power pack might be ideal so that each wired segment has its own dedicated power pack. But that was money that I would have to allocate at a later time.
Of course, running a DC layout this way requires proper turnout alignment and action comes to a halt if a locomotive crosses over into another powered block. But this was the price i'd pay for not investing money into DCC operation.
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