Early December Update

December is here and with it has come some progress on the layout and in particular the Bay City River Industrial Spur. I am blessed and glad to be making progress on the layout, especially during the hectic holidays. Just around the corner is a early January ops session with a regular operating crew.

   Does it look a little different than before?

Layout Work

During the FWLOD back in October I received a lot of good feedback and one takeaway that needed follow up on was the River Industrial Spur and its track layout. This spur is sandwiched west of Bay Yard before reaching the Saginaw River swing bridge.

As you can see from the photo above showing the previous layout diagram there was no run around for handling facing or trailing point moves. This caused the Y-BA04 to run back to Bay Yard to use Main 2 to run around its cars. Not only did this cause congestion, it was very inefficient and wasteful. Additionally there was room for an additional customer to be added tactfully but the track layout didn't sustain it.

Over the Thanksgiving Holliday and the past week I worked up a track layout that  would better serve the customers on the spur, but also add a effective run around track and room for one additional customer.

                     View east

                      View west

Trackwork was completed for the primary spur track and run around with switches cut in. This week the actual customer tracks with be installed to their respective switches and the switches will receive manual ground throws.

Customers on this spur include:

GEM BAKERIES - Inbound: Flour, Sugar, Corn Syrup

  Now on a single three carspot track.

AMCAN MATERIALS - Inbound: Bitumen, Asphalt binders

  Will have piping, 2 or 3 three relief tanks, unloading racks, and berms when complete.

The spur allows for modeling of some great backdrop / relief type buildings and modeling of a building interior which will be of the Corrugated plant rail / truck dock. Originally the corrugated plant had two tracks but with the changes it has been reduced to a single track with three carspots.

FORT MACKINAW CORRUGATED - Inbound: Linerboard 

   The open door with no track will be replaced with a truck door panel from the Walthers Kit.

By the end of this week, service will be restored and I know the operators in January will appreciate having the run around to make working the Y-BA04 a little more prototypical.

I hope this quick update brought you some Christmas Cheer in regards to model railroading. The Mid month post will have photos of the finished product and a few more project milestones to showcase before Christmas gets here.

Stay Safe

GM