The Tam Valley RR is a point-to-point style layout with a branch line. The western end is Sausalito, California and the eatern end is at Ogden Utah. The branch starts from Almonte and continues through Mill Valley and then to hidden staging. The branch has a lot of local switching buit into it. The rest of the layout is meant to be run as a through division with staged trains. There is a reverse loop and a small loop of track for continuous running built into the Sierra Mountains. The reverse loop allows for turning trains between operating sessions and the loop allows for breaking in engines.
The trackwork is mostly built on shelves above the dressers and beds of the 3 bedrooms of our house. This ends up having remarkably little impact on living room. Above much of the layout I put a shelf with a valence on the front. On the underside there are compact daylight flourescents and on top there is lots of storage.
The first room finished in 2006 and now completely sceniced. After I finish the extension (below), I plan to come back and rework the Sausalito-Mill Valley area to allow longer trains. The numb ered arrows correspond to the viewpoint of the pictures (below)
Addition completed July 2007 through the kids bedrooms. Currently working on finishing the scenery. I divided this area up into 3 seperate scenes plus a big terminal at the end. It gives the feeling of the trains traveling a much longer distance to have the seperated scenes each about one train length long.
1. Western staging - the cab forward is all steamed up and ready to go!
2. Coming out of the hidden tunnel to staging behind Sausalito
3. Starting up the grade at Almonte
4. On the curve behind Mill Valley
5. Across the bridges over the Sacramento River Delta and into the foothills
6. Up grade on the western slope of the Sierras
7. At Norden summit. This area is unfinished but eventually will be a snowshed scene.
8. Cold Creek (near Andover) on the eastern slope of the Sierras
9. Truckee River
10. Boca
11. Starting across the Nevada desert
12. Nevada Desert past Winnemucca
13. Crossing the bridges across the Humboldt River and into the Palisades Canyon. The WP track is in the front and the SP track is behind.
