Updated Aquia Line Track Plan

I updated the track plan for my home layout to reflect the as-built configuration for the areas that are complete and to revise the design of the portions in Aquia Landing that have yet to be built. While I was at it, I revised the graphics to incorporate the improved techniques that I adopted for my next book.

The big change in Aquia Landing was to remove one of the yard tracks between the bakery area and the wharf. I did this because the layout really didn't need a third track there and this more closely resembles the prototype. I also reconfigured the wharf to better reflect the prototype. This required removing the ironclad from the layout.

Note that this drawing depicts the track and ties to scale (the ties are not exact but they are close). One of the aspects I find with track plans that show tracks with just a single line is that it is easy to draw in too many tracks for an area. When you draw the track showing the rail, ties and roadbed to scale you get a much better feel for how the track fits in the scene. It is usually impractical to draw in the ties and rail in room-sized HO or N  scale plans. But for my O Scale layout, drawing the tracks this way helped convince me that I did not need that third yard track. Mocking up he scene convinced me.

The plan shows design length trains and four dozen freight cars  as they might actually appear during an op session. Note there are only 5 engines on the layout. I may have the only layout where I have more radio throttles than locomotives. Since I have about 13 freight cars now, I still need to build about 35.