Where to Continue
or Where to Start? (Continued)

In a previous post I talked about construction in stages, building and mostly finishing only the Penn Mary area before moving on.

I lied a little about that. But I have a good reason. Really.

The problem with limiting construction to just Penn Mary means that track wouldn’t yet be going around the corner to the right of the yard (see the image). So, building out just that area means there are really no yard leads. Getting more than a car or two from the Canton staging to the Penn Mary yard would be virtually impossible. Ditto moving autoracks to and from the yard.

To solve that problem, I decided to build around the corner and, while I was at it, include the area for Consolidated Coal. Again, see the image to the right to understand what I’m talking about. (You can also see the latest track full plan here.)

As you can see, once this track is in and wired, there will be plenty of lead to work the yard, and the Consolidated Coal area will be in as well. By adding a temporary staging track (or two, or three) that area can be operated, too. (Until then, it will suffer from the same lead problem, but that’s another story.)

To be honest, ops at Consolidated Coal won’t be all that thrilling, even once staging is in, since it will be unit trains going in and out with a minimal “main line” run, but at least I can test the track work to make sure it doesn’t have issues.

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