D&J RailRoad
Professor of HO
In 1984 I started a small layout in the empty basement of my new home, using left over lumber from the construction. I named it the D&J Railroad for Dad & Jon, my son who was a youngster then. A point to point switching layout with a single DC power pack and a couple of Athearn Trainmasters.
I mentioned to my mother that I had built this small layout and she told me she still had my trains that I left at home when I went off to the Marine Corps back in 1968. Hmmmmm, I thought I sold all that. Next time I visited her, I went up to the attic and found the box of HO scale Lionel freight cars and a Texas Special with nuke payload, box car and caboose with sprung trucks and a few other items.
The layout began to grow with a loop around at each end for constant running. Developed a freight yard control panel, then added an infra red remote control and a year later installed a couple of Aristo Craft radio controllers. The layout expanded around to another wall of the still empty basement, then one day, the bad news came when my high school age son told me, "Dad, trains aren't cool anymore." I was on my own. Almost a week later, my wife told me that one of the teachers at the school she worked at was a model railroader. I invited him over to see the layout and a new friendship began. He didn't have a layout, but he had tons of HO scale stuff. His many career moves made it impossible to establish much of anything and his pack rat style made it impossible to start any kind of layout even if he wanted to. A bit of encouragement and an influx of about 200 feet of flex track from him and I was convinced I had to extend the layout completely around the basement. Yeah, DCC wasn't too far behind. I got into it in the early years and built about 15 controller boards. I eventually stripped out the rotary cab controllers and sectioned the layout into three sections, each with its own Digitrax computer and breakers. The layout was club sized and I soon was sponsoring an established club at my house for full scale operating sessions, complete with radio headsets, a dispatcher position upstairs complete with video observation of major nodes in the layout. Teams of train crews had assignments for the 14 industries on the layout. The division yard had its own check in frequency and a yard team. A staging yard of 8 tracks, 45 feet long, held trains in ready for their appearance on the main layout with helper service to push them up the 70+ feet of 2.5% grades. A smattering of passenger service in an operating session saw a commuter or long haul Amtrak part the freight service as they made their way across the southwestern landscape. 60 car UP coal drags meeting 60 car COFC with BNSF motive power were common sites on the D&J Railroad.
The hobby was fun and life was great.
One day, the wife and I came to the decision that the basement had to be fixed up to sell the house. I couldn't put drywall up with the layout in place so I made the hard decision to tear it all down with the hope of rebuilding the D&J in some other place, in some other time. More than two months of work to remove and save all the track, signals, structures and foliage, then dismantle the bench work and haul most of it to the landfill. Construction began to put up framing and drywall, carpeting and a bathroom, with completion just in time for the housing market to fall apart.
So its been a few years now, lots of rolling stock in plastics tubs under the stairway. I finally put an 8 foot long 5 inch wide shelf on a wall in my video studio upstairs to just check the operation of a few locomotives. The housing market doesn't look good for years into the future now. The basement is virtually empty and beaconing me to do something with it.
I was doodling today and came up with an idea. I can't put track completely around the basement wall now as it was before because of the bathroom. The stairway and utilities are in the center of the 54' X 35' basement. I do have enough room for an 8 foot loop at each end of a 200' run of track and possibly fold it back over itself a few times for a long 1% or less grade uphill for a scale 10 miles. Division yards would be at the bottom end and the top end. The track would negotiate the elevation change with occasional flats for industries. The run from end to end would be on narrow shelfs of double track mainline with sidings in the corners of the basement. I envision 3 divisions for the Digitrax and a central easy access location for the computer and power supplies. I envision a programming track spur off of the mainline at a work station with programming software on a dedicated computer. The ceiling has recessed lighting and the whole room is air conditioned. I will be meeting with a long time model railroader this week to brainstorm how to launch this new railroad, using lessons learned, planning software and a real desire to get trains running again.
I mentioned to my mother that I had built this small layout and she told me she still had my trains that I left at home when I went off to the Marine Corps back in 1968. Hmmmmm, I thought I sold all that. Next time I visited her, I went up to the attic and found the box of HO scale Lionel freight cars and a Texas Special with nuke payload, box car and caboose with sprung trucks and a few other items.
The layout began to grow with a loop around at each end for constant running. Developed a freight yard control panel, then added an infra red remote control and a year later installed a couple of Aristo Craft radio controllers. The layout expanded around to another wall of the still empty basement, then one day, the bad news came when my high school age son told me, "Dad, trains aren't cool anymore." I was on my own. Almost a week later, my wife told me that one of the teachers at the school she worked at was a model railroader. I invited him over to see the layout and a new friendship began. He didn't have a layout, but he had tons of HO scale stuff. His many career moves made it impossible to establish much of anything and his pack rat style made it impossible to start any kind of layout even if he wanted to. A bit of encouragement and an influx of about 200 feet of flex track from him and I was convinced I had to extend the layout completely around the basement. Yeah, DCC wasn't too far behind. I got into it in the early years and built about 15 controller boards. I eventually stripped out the rotary cab controllers and sectioned the layout into three sections, each with its own Digitrax computer and breakers. The layout was club sized and I soon was sponsoring an established club at my house for full scale operating sessions, complete with radio headsets, a dispatcher position upstairs complete with video observation of major nodes in the layout. Teams of train crews had assignments for the 14 industries on the layout. The division yard had its own check in frequency and a yard team. A staging yard of 8 tracks, 45 feet long, held trains in ready for their appearance on the main layout with helper service to push them up the 70+ feet of 2.5% grades. A smattering of passenger service in an operating session saw a commuter or long haul Amtrak part the freight service as they made their way across the southwestern landscape. 60 car UP coal drags meeting 60 car COFC with BNSF motive power were common sites on the D&J Railroad.
The hobby was fun and life was great.
One day, the wife and I came to the decision that the basement had to be fixed up to sell the house. I couldn't put drywall up with the layout in place so I made the hard decision to tear it all down with the hope of rebuilding the D&J in some other place, in some other time. More than two months of work to remove and save all the track, signals, structures and foliage, then dismantle the bench work and haul most of it to the landfill. Construction began to put up framing and drywall, carpeting and a bathroom, with completion just in time for the housing market to fall apart.
So its been a few years now, lots of rolling stock in plastics tubs under the stairway. I finally put an 8 foot long 5 inch wide shelf on a wall in my video studio upstairs to just check the operation of a few locomotives. The housing market doesn't look good for years into the future now. The basement is virtually empty and beaconing me to do something with it.
I was doodling today and came up with an idea. I can't put track completely around the basement wall now as it was before because of the bathroom. The stairway and utilities are in the center of the 54' X 35' basement. I do have enough room for an 8 foot loop at each end of a 200' run of track and possibly fold it back over itself a few times for a long 1% or less grade uphill for a scale 10 miles. Division yards would be at the bottom end and the top end. The track would negotiate the elevation change with occasional flats for industries. The run from end to end would be on narrow shelfs of double track mainline with sidings in the corners of the basement. I envision 3 divisions for the Digitrax and a central easy access location for the computer and power supplies. I envision a programming track spur off of the mainline at a work station with programming software on a dedicated computer. The ceiling has recessed lighting and the whole room is air conditioned. I will be meeting with a long time model railroader this week to brainstorm how to launch this new railroad, using lessons learned, planning software and a real desire to get trains running again.
