Photos from my new New York Central Westside Railroad project, a West Chelsea (New York City) themed proto-freelance shelf layout I started in August 2021. The layout combines elements of the street-level New York Central Westside railroad that dominated Tenth Avenue until 1934 with elements of the elevated West Side Freight Line that began operation in the same year. The layout will straddle both eras even though in reality the New York Central stopped the street running through Tenth Avenue in 1934. Timewise, the layout is placed sometime in the mid 1950ies.
The N scale layout is a single level L-shaped shelf layout and has a size of 7.5 ft times 8.5 ft. Two dog bone-style loops extend across the entire layout, one for the street level freight trains and the other one for the elevated Westside Line with freight or passenger traffic. The two loops are connected by two ramps. The street level tracks are mostly laid into the streets and can be used by the trolleys as well.
Construction is modular using the one one module at a time approach. Modules are fully functional sections of the layout built on a frame 40 cm long and 65 cm deep with the reverse loop modules a bit larger. The current plan is to have seven standard size modules and one reverse loop module at every end. The blog for the new layout begins here.
