Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 I built my house. My wife and I drove every nail, every piece of siding, all the electrical, drywall, insulation, mounding, paint and plumbing. I swear, I’ll never hire that plumber again! Anyway, our original plans were for a stand alone train building. But we both got “Severe Construction Fatigue” so, by mutual consent, I got the basement for the train room. It’s 2000 sq ft. Right now it’s full of junk which we are sifting through, slowly.  In addition my knee surgery has kept me upstairs for the first six months of this year.  We did get a very small leak in a fitting under the master shower, and because it was way on the far side of the basement, and because we didn’t go down there much anyway, this small leak just dripped, unremarked, for weeks. It’s doubtful something like that will happen again. I don’t mean we won’t get another leak, it just won’t go unnoticed for weeks again because I’m in the basement a lot more often now.  Still it scared me away from car...

 None of you are going to believe this, and no matter how often I tell you you’re all going to lose sleep, but the vast majority of the mistakes you make building your layout are NEVER going to show, and no one is going to notice them. I promise you my mistakes have been seen by far more people than you’d guess. More often it’s when things go right that the problems start.  I get it. Me telling you not to worry isn’t going to magically make you stop worrying, but STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT!  Nine times out of ten it’s going to get covered up, and the tenth time no one will notice. BELIEVE ME. What’s more important is developing the ability to progress in spite of things going wrong. Call it “problem solving”. As you add tricks to your bag while working, each new problem will become less and less of a pain.

 I model 1952 and will use my “good” running Steam locomotives for coal operations. What this will mean is turntables! I’ll need turning facilities. Interestingly the engines I’ll be using for my coal trains, USRA Y Class 2-8-8-2’s won’t fit on any of the 90’ turntables I own. I’ll be turning those engines on a Wye. But I want the 90’ turntables to turn diesels: they will accommodate two F-Units, so an A-B set can be turned. These 90’ turntables will act as a reminder of the steam era past on my layout, and if and when I steamilize  then these turntables will come in handy. Now as to the turntables themselves, on AIR1 I had one turntable, at Littlerock engine service. It was an “Armstrong”(1*) version. That is, you turned it with your hand. It was not indexed, had no motor, no electronics. You drove the engine up on the turntable, turned the bridge, lined it up with the Mark 1 Eyeball, made sure the polarity was correct, and that was it. The way polarity was aligned was the do...