Morning Epiphany

I love long showers, but not for the reason you might think.  Having just recently moved into a new home in another state I have a new train room.  Unfortunately, this train room does not have the same dimensions as my old one.  While the old room was 33x10 feet this one is a 20x20 foot square.  I did a little pre-planning when I designed the old layout and built it in sections that are bolted together, so it can be moved and reused.  Only issue is it can’t go back together in the same configuration.

So what to do now?  I’ve taken the first few months living here and just gone over tentative designs in my head.  While this has been a good exercise in the mechanics of planning, it hasn’t really gotten me anything that I would consider satisfying.  Maybe what I needed to do was take a step back and think long and hard about what characteristics I like in a model railroad.  This is where that long shower comes in.

Sometimes it seems like I have my greatest epiphanies in the shower.  Maybe it’s the continuous stream of hot water that relaxes the body and mind or not having other distractions to move the thought process away from where the mind wants to go, but today gave me one of those “aha” moments.  Perhaps I should explain in more detail.

I have always been a big fan of the Southern Pacific.  Maybe it’s because it’s the railroad I grew up with as a railfan and modeler or perhaps it’s because the SP gave me a steady paycheck for several years.  Regardless, every model railroad I’ve ever built has revolved around the SP in one form or another.  But with the move to this new home my mind started to wander.  I toyed with the idea of modeling the Yosemite Valley as a modern day short line, as well as building a Generic Western Railroad to just watch trains go round and round.  But in the end I found myself not being completely satisfied with either of those approaches.  Sure, the YV would have interchanged with the UP (SP) and BNSF (SF), and the GW would have had vestiges of the SP in there somewhere, but in my heart I think I’m more of a prototype modeler.

And that brings me back to my opening sentence.  As I said earlier I’ve been doodling track plans over the past few months.  Well it seems as if one of those doodles found a little recess in my mind where it could lurk until the time was right for it to pop out in all its glory and say “Hi, remember me?”  That became the genesis of the aha moment I mentioned earlier.  I now know the what, where and when of my soon to be built model railroad.  Yes, it will be the SP and yes it is based on a specific portion of that railroad, but if you want more details you’ll have to wait for an upcoming blog post.

Cheers, Dennis Drury