After many years of no attention, the P&W Railroad has finally sprung back to life but with only after deciding to revise the general approach to its construction and simplifying the track design as well. This all started with taking some time during the COVID-19 lock-down to clear away the stuff that had piled up on the layout and thinking that it was screaming out for a bit of attention.
So … what to do … the first decision made was that I would like to get the track functional with the least amount of effort which in my case meant switching from the original Marklin track plan to a revised Rokuhan track plan. This meant removing two features that I wasn’t totally committed to in the first place and those were the two hidden sections: the hidden industry connecting track and the hidden reversing cutover track. At this point, the layout is therefore simplified into a free-running loop with less emphasis on operational variations.
To help visualize where this might take me, I took what Rokuhan track I had in stock to build up the track plan on the existing form. I didn’t have all of the track that I would eventually need but it was a good start.
During this process, I soon decided to simplify the track plan even further by eliminating the double mainline sections which eased coming up with a workable route limited by the sectional track choices available to me. At this point, I needed to acquire additional track to help me complete a reasonably smooth running mainline.