Southwestern New Jersey seems somewhat devoid of N Scale model railroaders. Putting together a reliable operating crew is somewhat challenging. You want to find folks who are somewhat compatible in interests and behavior (ex: civilized, non-smoking, non-cussing, and semi-rational :-) ). (I am becoming more and more convinced that many model railroaders cross that last barrier.)
I found one of my regular crew of four from the Railwire forum, one from the Nscale.net forum (who brought a friend) and one locally. Two of them travel about 80 miles to join me and that is asking a lot. Another travels about 20 miles, the fourth is local. I have access to occasional substitutes but both come from distances across the Delaware River (on the Pennsylvania frontier).
I do seasonal work for a tax preparation company which wipes out my playtime schedule about 4 months (mid-January to mid-April) of every year and impacts another 2 months (mid-November to mid-January). That leaves 6 months, of which Summer consumes 3 months. One of my regulars lives at the Jersey shore and loves boating, another likes to ride his tricycle on sunny weekends, and a third seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth (probably dealing with family issues). One of the part-timers does teleprompting for corporations and politicians. That is his only income so trains, of necessity take a back seat.
So I am off and I can't put together an operating crew. Building kits is becoming less fun due to increasingly shaky hands.
An idle mind finds ways to get into trouble. So a significant portion of the layout went from this:
To this:
Why you might ask (possibly remembering the "non-rational" quote above)? Many reasons:
* No operating crew and nothing to do
* Boredom (the layout was approaching that nearly completed state which leads to BOREDOM)
* The Millville/Deepwater ends needed staging and I had absolutely no way to squeeze it in.
* As I aged, the duck-under was becoming a pain in the neck back
* I wanted to start running 30-40 car coal drags, sand drags, and tanker trains (staging again) and yard capacity was limiting me to 20 or less.
* During operations, the Camden Pavonia yard was becoming overloaded and these changes will more evenly balance the workload between the two towers.
So left unattended I tore down several sections (Camden/Philly/Manayunk were not affected) and plan to make several changes which may or may not work.
* The Westville and Woodbury sections will be rearranged and placed back to back (and lowered)
* Staging for both ends will be along the wall Westville used to occupy.
There are costs to this attempt.
* I am at a standstill until I can get 3 more people to help me move the existing sections.
* Tighter curves (19" min radius to 15").
* The entrance end will have restricted aisle widths
* Westville will now fall under un-prototypical control of Brown Tower (Camden) instead of Red Oak Tower (Woodbury)
* A lot more work
I am uncharacteristically doing this without a detailed scaled plan. But if it doesn't work I'll change themes, do away with the Westville and Woodbury modules and just build a new non-PRSL railroad along the the other wall leaving the center of the room open. (The room certainly feels brighter and more friendly that way!)
The lesson from all this: "Never leave Rick alone with his idle (dangerous) mind."
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