Planning

 Since I was a teenager I told myself once I had my own house, I wanted to build a basement-sized HO scale layout. When I was younger, I had a layout in my parents basement that a friend and I built around 1997. It wasn't anything spectacular, just a small 'L' shaped layout with a siding and small yard. 

Fast forward twenty-one years. I finally got around to buying my own house. I didn't start building right away. I let the idea stew in my head for over two years. What era did I want? Did I want a prototypical layout or something unique? I knew I wanted to model Conrail since I grew up watching C30-7A's and SD80MAC's on the B&A.

Then one night it hit me as I laid in bed. Modern Day Conrail. Imagine if the Conrail split of 1999 never happened. Oh the limitless potential. I wouldn't be restricted to a specific time frame or motive power. Whats more, I could have modern Conrail power. Naturally I was going to model the B&A. Obviously with the B&A being over 200 miles long, I couldn't model the entire thing, So I'd build a stretch of the B&A that I spent the most time on; West Springfield Yard, west. 

Now came the planning. I scoured the interwebs looking for the perfect software to design the layout. It didn't take long before I found AnyRail. I spent the next few weeks designing, deleting, re-designing, deleting and repeat. Finally I had a plan. CP99 to CP107. Not much but its a start. I decided to build a prototypical layout with some changes. First, I had to create something to go between CP99 eastbound and CP107 westbound. A campground. Another change made was the interlockings would have names instead of the CP numbers that Conrail used. A minor change but a change none the less.

Now to start construction....