I have made quite good progress over the last 8 days . . .

First I glued 2′ (50mm) foam all around the left side and rear of the layout where I wanted a grade separation between the tracks.

Next I laid all of the Kato Unitrack on lower part of the layout. This included confirming that the reverse loop was in fact a viable option.

Then I tested the DCC connection to the trackage, at first with a RRamp meter and then with an Atlas U36B locomotive. I connected an NCE PowerCab to the end of one of the sidings and then checked the voltage on every branch, first making sure that the Kato #6 turnouts were pointing in the correct direction for the power routing. The loco ran at a slow speed (30/126) on every piece of track with no stalling or challenges.

Yesterday I finally took delivery of a Woodland Scenics 2% incline/decline set. Although made with white foam, aka Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), which is not easy to work with, as compared to the blue Extruded Polystyrene (XPS), the Woodland Scenics product is wonderful for the determination of the correct percentage incline required on a layout.

Upon installing the incline set it quickly became apparent that I needed a longer run to reach the 2″ height of the scenery I had planned for the upper level of the layout. Furthermore the foam on which the oil and bakery industries planned for the right hand corner of the layout needed to be reduced in height from 2″ to 1½” and in order for the left side trackage to gain the 2″ elevation required to meet the right hand side trackage the incline would have to be 3%.

Now I wait for the Woodland Scenics 3% incline/decline set to arrive to finalise the track arrangement.

I have made reasonable progress over the last 7 days while surviving the last round of Chemo prior to the operation to remove the tumour.

First I installed  the 50mm foam insulation on top of the plywood base. Not as easy as it sounds as the foam sheets are only available in a 4′ x 2′ (1200mm x 600mm) size, which meant gluing 4 full size sheets plus cutting 4 strips of foam to equal the slightly larger 8′ x 4′ frame. I used Selleys “Liquid Nails Fast Grab” which did a pretty good job. I also found that long screws were able to hold the narrow strips of foam at the front to the main sheets.

I then used masking tape to seal the gaps. I was concerned about how level the layout was but on checking with my digital spirit level I found that there was only about a ½% difference all round.

Although now a little heaver the layout can still be raised to allow access to the wiring while standing up.

I then printed the entire track plan using AnyRail ver. 7 on a 1:1 basis. This resulted in 30 A3 (11.69 × 16.54 inches) sheets of paper which I laid out on top of the foam. As expected the actual layout is a little larger than the drawn track plan which will give me some flexibility when it comes to positioning the actual track.

AnyRail ver. 7 also provides a “List of Materials” which includes all of the individual Kato Unitrack pieces required. I have ordered these from Plaza Japan and expect delivery during the next 7 days. As an indication for new Railroad modelers the cost of purchasing all of the Kato Unitrack and turnouts for the layout was just over AUD$1,000. Keep in mind that the cost of Kato turnouts includes the point motors, making Kato half the price of an equivalent Peco turnout.

My decision to use Kato track, rather than Peco, was: (a) ease of track laying; (b) Kato track is bullet proof; (c) no need to source Mid-west cork roadbed (which is very expensive to ship from the USA) and (d) flexibility in the different curve radii used.

A major advantage of laying out the 1:1 track plan is the ability to plan where the scenery will be developed. The current plan is to raise the track on the outer loop at the back of the layout and the North Yard trackage (shown with brown lines in the following track plan) around 2″ (50mm) higher than the track in the main body of the layout (shown with cyan lines). I am using the 1:1 track plan to create templates for cutting the 50mm foam to fit. However I cannot complete this process until the Woodland Scenics 2″ risers arrive from Lombard Hobbies at the end of the month.

The branch trackage to the Denver Flour Mills and Eaton Metal Products is also 2″ higher than the Northwest Terminal Railroad trackage. Achieving this will be challenging, as will the positioning of track and scenery in the Duban Station area. I may abandon the Station and Team track spur in favour of the easier laying of scenery. We shall see.

I have began to sketch out the scenery on the latest edition of the track plan (as at 13th July 2026). The green lines are roads and the cyan strip indicates the path of the South Platte River which flowed to the east of the Public Service of Colorado Cherokee Power Plant.

Last night I was able to finish building the layout to”flip top” stage. i.e. you can raise the whole layout up at an angle and work on the underside wiring whilst still standing up!!

Now all I have to do is glue the 50mm foam insulation to the plywood top and I will be ready to lay track and scenery.

On testing the hinged support (with a minimum number of screws) for the Rock Island Sandown N Scale Layout I realised that I had placed the hinges on the wrong way around and that I needed them to allow the layout to be lifted from the front.

This photograph does not look as if much has changed overnight but given the extreme Chemotherapy-Induced Neuropathy (a condition that happens when certain cancer treatments affect the nerves that carry signals between the brain, spinal cord, and the rest of your body — especially in the hands and feet) in my fingers I did a pretty good job of installing 3 piano hinges with very small screws on the back support.

Having fixed that screwup I now only have to cut the support braces to size and attach them to the front and back layout supports. I am then good to go with the second sheet of 8′ x 4′ plywood as a base for the 50mm insulation foam board. I am finding that in spite of the difficulty of using my fingers I am greatly motivated by achieving the continuing layout build each night.

Thanks to the side effects for my regular Chemo sessions for Oesophagus Cancer I am unable to continue working on my large Denver’s RailRoads which is located in an external 4 car garage.

However rather than just dream about running trains again I decided to take advantage of now being alone in a 4 bedroom house with no one to object to how much space my model railroading takes up. So as detailed in my earlier blogs and on Facebook, I have started building a 8′ x 4′ N scale layout in what was my wife’s gym.

Because of my poor physical health I have had to be careful to plan the building of the layout with lighter materials than I would normally use. Consequently I have used four outdoor type tables from our local hardware store as the base, bound together by a 3mm sheet of 8′ x 4′ plywood, suitably braced, as the following photograph shows. I now plan to attach a second 3mm sheet of 8′ x 4′ plywood, hinged to the lower piece, so that I can work on the underside wiring whilst standing up.

The track for the layout will be laid on top of 50mm insulation foam board which will be glued to the second 3mm sheet of 8′ x 4′ plywood, hopefully making a strong but fairly light weight layout. We shall see. The ultimate rail height from the floor will be just over 34″ which should be quite a good working height in the circumstances.

I keep fiddling with the track plan and hopefully improving the layout. The following is the latest rendition (as at July 5, 2026) which includes an additional spur on the Northwest Terminal Railroad (showing in cyan below). I have also changed a couple of Walthers kits representing various prototype buildings. The PSC Cherokee Plant is now the major industry on the layout.

As mentioned in the June 2026 update blog I have began the planning of a new 4′ x 8′ (with a staging extension) N scale layout that I can build inside my house and will enable me to achieve, be it on a smaller stage, a number of modelling activities (eg weathering, signaling, auto train control, scenery and kit building) currently awaiting the completion of at least the wiring of the Denver’s RailRoads layout, which is now unlikely to ever happen.

My trackplan is based on an original 3′ x 7′ N scale layout heavily featured on a YouTube channel called the “Chicago Crossing Model Railroad” see – https://www.youtube.com/@ChicagoCrossingRR/featured and a version of the track plan using Kato Unitrack at https://www.steves-trains.com/post/n-scale-track-plans.

This is the original Kato Unitrack version of the trackplan:

Eric, the Chicago Crossing Model Railroad (CCMR) builder freely admits that the 3′ x 7′ size, with little option to extend, has severely reduced the options of the original plan which is based on industrial Chicago Railroading in 1997. There are only 7 industries on the original CCMR but by extending the layout size to a 4′ x 8′ I have increased the number of industries to 13 and have been able to enhance the basic plan considerably.

My plan of course has to be related to the larger Denver’s RailRoads layout which is based on the six class one railroads – D&RGW, C&S, CB&Q, AT&SF, UP and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, also known as “The Rock” and the CRI&P – that entered Denver on a daily basis in the transition period leading up to the creation of Amtrak and Burlington Northern in 1970.

As much as I like the Rio Grande I needed a much smaller prototype for this much smaller layout and over time I have become fond of the plain brown and orange colour scheme used by the Rock Island before 1970 and I have 10 diesel switchers, Alco, EMD, GE and FM painted in that scheme or the earlier plain dark red scheme.

General Electric U28B #281, followed by GE U25B #213.

Atlas N scale model of the Fairbanks-Morse H-15-44 #400 which was mainly assigned to Chicago suburban service but on the Rock Island Railroad will pull both passenger and freight service.

The Rock Island railroad first secured entry into Denver in 1889 through a trackage rights agreement with the Union Pacific to use their line from Limon. However, starting in 1950, the railroad entered Denver at the North End of D&RGW’s newly built North Yard from a cut-off that began at Sandown Jct., just west of Denver’s Stapleton Field airport and continued for 4 miles to Belt Jct., where the railroad connected to the Northwest Terminal Railroad, also known as the East Denver Belt Line. The Rock Island purchased two separate parcels of land along the line, the 151-acre Airlawn Industrial District and the 66-acre Sandown Industrial area.

This Rock Island line directly enters the Rio Grande North Yard (modeled as part of Denver’s RailRoads) and by 1969, had nearly 50 separate industries located at Airlawn. In addition, they built a piggyback and multi-level automobile facility at Sandown. Both locations are easily modeled on the 4′ x 8′ expanded layout of the original 3′ x 7′ CCMR trackplan.

The most important change to the original CCMR trackplan was to increase the depth from 3′ to 4′. This extra depth enabled me to add two additional long tracks between the branch line and the two track main line making in effect a 4 track Duban Yard and the Sandown piggyback and multi-level automobile facility. Even in N scale a 3′ depth severely limits the track curvature whereas a 4′ depth enables quite broad curves. Kato unitrack further enhances the choice of curves. If I was going to build the layout with Peco flexible track I would have been limited, on the two track main line, to using two 3′ lengths of track, making an 18″ to 21″ curve. By using Kato unitrack I was able to join a variety of curved track, using 14″ and 15″ curves for the tight side of the double track loop and 19″ curves for the broader loop into the Duban Yard tracks. I also used 11″ curved unitrack at the tighter entrance to the Northwest Terminal Railroad. And thanks to the quality Kato unitrack system you know that most trains will run on any of its curved track pieces.

The following is the “final” trackplan, as of 16th June 2026. As can be seen I have flipped the original plan so as to represent the Rio Grande North Yard in its correct geographical location. Furthermore, I have managed, pretty much by accident, to create a return loop with the branch line. Although this will complicate the electrical wiring it will significantly enhance the operational options of the trackplan. At the moment the plan includes a level cross over at Belt Jct., however I plan to build the track shown in dark red around the outside of the trackplan about 2″ higher than the other track and consequently cross the branch line on a bridge.

As mentioned on my personal Facebook page I have Oesophagus Cancer. I have now had 3 out of 4 pre-op Chemo sessions and if the tumor has shrunk enough they plan to operate for its removal in a month or so. However it is clear that the already almost impossible task of bringing the Denver’s RailRoads N scale layout (which is housed in a 4 car garage in my garden) to an operational stage is now just not going to happen, even if I regain most of my strength after the final 4 post-op Chemo sessions. I will be close to 80 years old by then and it is time to face reality.

But . . . I have been a model railroad layout builder since I was 28 years old and found this wonderful hobby that has dominated my life ever since. And I have a huge amount of rolling stock and locomotives, not to mention unbuilt kits, scenery materials, signals and various electronic devices.

Consequently I have began the planning of a new 4′ x 8′ (with a staging extension) N scale layout that I can build inside my house and will enable me to achieve, be it on a smaller stage, a number of modelling activities (eg weathering, signaling, auto train control, scenery and kit building) currently awaiting the completion of at least the wiring of the Denver’s RailRoads layout.

Watch this space . . . for step by step planning and details of the new layout!

Managed to paint all of the MDF boards with a sky blue paint and have started to install my railroad memorabilia.

24th April 2026

The NMRA WA crew came for a visit last Sunday and installed half a dozen MDF sheets against the back garage wall.

Because the layout is an island style there is not a formal backdrop. I plan to paint the MDF sheets and the garage wall a sky blue colour. However the purpose of the MDF sheets is to act as a background to my collection of Railroad Memorabilia.

Watch this space.