Interlocking Limits

Black River Junction is a switching layout based in Washington, USA near Tacoma. It is set on the Milwaukee Road in the period just before the Pacific extension was abandoned around 1980, depicting the rural-switching common to isolated communities.

Essential Details:

• Scale: HO

• Size 11′ x 7′
• Control Method: DCC
• Track: Peco Code 83

Trackplan:

The route starts in the lower-right of the plan, depicting a leg off the Tacoma wye heading towards the town of Elliott. A small yard plays host to the local switcher and provides a base of operations for operations further down the line, namely the Northern Pacific interchange tracks in Elliott which continue South-east.

Gallery:

Operations:
There are two main operational facets to the Black River layout – firstly is the retrieval and blocking of cars coming from the Milw mainline in Black River yard, the switcher needs to block Elliott local cars and NP interchange cars ready for the Elliott Turn, as well as outbound cars ready to return to Seattle and so on, as well as switch the industries that flank the yard tracks.

The second job on the layout is to run the Elliott Turn, switching all of the industries in the town and the NP interchange track before returning and tieing down.

Positives:
This was my first foray into DCC and provided a great testing ground for wiring and programming. I tried my hand at polarity switched turnouts and computerised switch-list operation.

Negatives:
Because there was no off-layout staging I found it diffficult to marry-up my ideal of a working railroad while compromising so hard on fidelity.Computerised switching was an unmitigated failure (far too over-the-top for such a small layout).

Lessons Learnt:

• Trying to fit mainline ops into a small space that’d be more suitable for switching is futile.
• H0-scale is too large to fit as a fully functioning railroad in the space I have available