So what's next?

One of the first track plans I bumped into when I decided to start railroading again was Marty McGuirk's Carolina Central featured in the December '96 and January '97 Model Railroader as well as covered in his book N Scale Model Railroading: Getting Started in the Hobby. There is a second edition of the book available now that covered the Androscoggin Central, a similar but larger plan.

The Carolina Central has a bit of a cult following around the Internet, searching for Carolina Central N Scale returns tons of information. There are a number of forum threads including a very lengthy one, and even a series of YouTube videos on someone's version of it. It's been rehashed in recent years with a Kato Uni-Track version.

As appealing as Uni-Track is, that version of the plan is a bit condensed for my taste, and being I already have a boat load of non-Kato track I can't really justify spending a bunch of money on more. In addition to wanting a roundy rounder to run trains on, I'm also trying to keep the cost manageable. Health, family things, other interests, and (sorry) the unstable economy all factor in.

I really like the original plan, it offers continuous running, a clever place to hide a train, no hoaky tunnels, grades, or mountains. It has opportunity for good scenery, photo ops, and as much switching as I care to do. I don't care for the switchback, but can work with it, and it does maybe offer a good reason to have a small switch engine assigned to the town. It's also got places for a bunch of DPM buildings I have built over the past couple years, as well as a good place for the obligatory scrap yard (can't have a railroad without some scrap metal can you?).

Over the next few weeks I'll have to dig out the box of track and see what parts are in there, I'm thinking there are enough usable pieces that I won't have to buy much if any. Sorry no pictures this time, just the blob of text.