My Main Influences

My main influences behind the concept of the Atlantic Inland were, in the beginning, Allen McCelland ‘s V&O and Tony Koester’s AM. Over time I have developed a lot of my own ideas, mostly to do with operations and the procedures needed to perform a layout job.

The AIR is a freelanced coal hauling, bridge route running from Newport News, VA to East St. Louis, IL. set in 1952.
The modeled portion represents only a few miles in Central West Virginia, set around the fictional town of Littlerock, call it about 65 miles east-southeast of Charleston, WV.
What a novel, original, imaginative concept for a layout!
While it is not an original idea, I’ve, and I hope those who’ve operated with me on it, had a lot of fun.

I strongly recommend going to other layouts to operate. Make every effort to “Get around”. In several regions of the country it’s fairly easy, in others it’s a plane ride. But get out, see how other people are doing it, copy what you like, make adjustments to fit your layout’s operations.

My main “Theme” industry is coal. I want all the through traffic to travel back and forth in front of a backdrop of moving coal hoppers.

The major secondary industries, probably to numerous to have actually located and grown up in the region are:
LCL
PAPER MILL
CEMENT
AGRICULTURE

On AIR 1 I had a job named “The Freight House”, it included a 48 spot freight house for LCL loading, passenger operations, REA, Post Office, a city team track, a small pig ramp, a scale track, and a RIP track. One person, who chose this job, worked it all session.

On AIR2 the plan is for a much in larger freight house complex including:
Inbound Freight House-24 spots
Outbound Freight House-12 spots
Transfer Freight House-48 spots

These will all be switched by one person. REA, Post Office, Team Track and Passenger Operations have been split off to create a separate job.

Additionally several connecting railroads will have freight houses on-layout and some sort of transfer will be established between houses. Right now the connecting roads firmly established are the Western Maryland and the Norfolk &Western. The list of other potential connecting roads is:
C&O
B&O
V&O
VGN
NYC (The NYC has a huge presence in West Virginia)
PRR
SOU
LN

Who else can you think of?

Well I am sealing grout in the new kitchen and master bath, and installing hardwood floor in the house, so I’m off to work. I’ll still be thinking about and designing, in my head, the AIR 2. 
I’m interested in your thoughts.

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