The new walls are up in the basement and they are nearly done.
The benchwork will follow quickly.

Due to a fairly recent move, I had to completely disassemble my layout. I did, however, save all the hard work by saving all the structures and a lot of scenery. I will be building a nwe - bigger - better layout at our new house but it will be at least late summer 2005 before I get it going. Actually, I never was really satisfied with how traffic flowed on the old layout and I'm studying it more before I start the new layout.
I plan to include exact, or at least nearly exact, replicas of places near Moorestown, NJ (my home town), the Cass Scenic Railroad in West Virginia, the Main Street of Barboursville, West Virginia and. If space permits, I'll put Hawks Nest State Park in West Virginia and a section of Huntington, West Virginia in it too. I'll have to wait to see exactly how much of the basement area I can use for the layout plus I promised my young son a small area of his own.
Until then, I will leave the information on my old layout and I hope to add pictures I have of full-scale units in the C&O Berkshire area.

I am constructing an HO scale model railroad based on the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) railroad system. It is primarily staged in the late 40's early 50's as C&O was running both steam & diesel and experimenting with a variety of paint schemes about this time. The Hart's Creek line runs out of Harts, WV located in the West - South - West area of West Virginia, and passes through Barboursville, WV where I grew up.
Click here for a list of my track stock. (In work)

I am a retired US Air Force Communications / Computer / Electronics Engineer but still work part time and run my web site, The Woodcrafter Page at www.TheWoodcrafter.net. Work on the layout has been very slow as I stay very busy around my home where I live with my wonderful wife and youngest son (10 years old). This is, after all, a hobby and just for fun.

To date, I am still playing around with track design. The layout should mostly fill a room about 16' x 20' in a 'J' shaped bench. Some of the features I am planning to definately include are Barboursville, WV, Huntington, WV, Rancocas Creek, NJ, Cass RR, WV, and Moorestown, NJ.
I have pretty well elected to not use DDC (about 99% decided) as I want the layout to employ continuous forward running while changing travel directions. I belonged to the Las Vegas, NV Model Railroad Club back in 1982 and learned an immense amount of knowledge while there.
Knowing how so many people shy away from using a Central Train Control (CTC) panel, I have added a how-to section on this site. I think you will find it very easy to follow and extremely informative if you are undecided as to how to wire your layout. Click here to go to the CTC How-To page.
However, I will be experimenting with DCC using an older MRC DCC controll system my brother sent me when he updated his system. It seems MRC swears that it has indeed perfected the direction reverse problems. If MRC's report is accurate, it would make wiring my layout IMMENSLY easier.

I will keep posting pictures of the progress here as I proceed so keep checking back. I've also posted some pictures of the layout in Las Vegas and of the module I constructed while a member of the Warner Robins, GA Modular Railroad Club as well as some really good shots my father took of a Berkshire running through Huntington, WV.

Do you hate seeing those ugly switch mechanisms on your layout? I have developed a quite reliable, yet pretty simple, way to take those nasty looking old Atlas (or similar) switch machines

Before the modifcation.
and convert them to an under-the-table unit to improve the scenic quality of your layout. No more making sure there 'just happens to be' a mound of dirt next to every turnout to hide the switch machines. Click here to download the Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file (88kb) showing the procedures.

After the modifcation.