Introduction

With a new story and a new layout, I have started this new blog.  I already have two other blogs going that address different aspects of my model railroading hobby and those will continue but perhaps at a somewhat slower pace than in the past.

My interest in modeling the paired track through the Palisade Canyon in central Nevada can be traced back to a spring day in 2001.  John Claudino of Aztec Manufacturing and I were driving across Nevada on Interstate 80 on our way to the Rocky Mountain N Scale convention in Denver.

While I had driven this route myself before, my attention during those drives was more on the driving and not so much the railroad tracks that were visible in varying degrees from the freeway.  I had a general idea of the route that they followed as this was part of the route of the original transcontinental line.  I also understood that now in 2001 all of it was owned by the Union Pacific as they had taken over the Southern Pacific in 1996 and before that in 1982 had taken over the Western Pacific.  This time John and I were splitting the driving between us and I could be a passenger some of the time and take in more of the surrounding scenery.

John had a scanner in his truck and we were listening to the Union Pacific Railroad's radio traffic, and seeing a lot of trains on the nearby tracks.  As we headed east and were somewhere just east of Battle Mountain, the tracks that were on our left or the north side of I-80 curved to the right and under the highway to continue off to the south, following a river that at that time I did not know the name of.  I asked John where these tracks went and he replied that they went through Palisade Canyon and would re-join Interstate 80 further east.

Present Day

Many of the layout blogs I read have quite a few "catch up" posts as they are following a project that has been in progress for some time before the blog started.  In this case the layout construction is just about to begin in the fall of 2013 as I work to put the finishing touches on a new 200 square foot layout space in my garage.

These first several posts will cover how the idea and plan for this layout has developed over the 12 years prior to now.  I've gone back through my notes and drawings and will try to present these in a chronological order. After that I'll be posting regular updates on the layout construction progress.

So if this sounds interesting to you, please feel free to subscribe.  It is my hope that this will be a long story.