The Valley Central Railway is a fictitious railway that is jointly owned by the Canadian National Railway and CP Rail in Canada. It serves a variety of industries, including a coal mine, which has its own branch line, an electric power generating station, a box manufacturing company, and numerous steel, lumber and other misc. industries. The main yard also has a small intermodal facility that can handle both trailer and container handling. There will be one main town on the railway, as yet unamed, and possibly 1 or 2 other small residential areas along the main line. The main town will also have a couple of small industries served by the railway. I've always enjoyed looking at layouts that have street trackage. The layout was designed using Atlas's Right Track Software, and changes to the layout, which have been happening quite often, are only a click of a mouse button away. The overall area in the three layout rooms is about 425 sq.ft., and total track length, including staging yard, is just under 560'. The smallest of the three rooms will have half of the main yard on one wall, and a corner section with floor to ceiling scenery, with a single track of main line over a trestle of some type, along the opposite wall. The room will be shared with a dart board, (and hopefully a bar built into a closet) for those nights we have non-rail related visitors. A curtain will be installed to protect the layout from being bombed by darts during play.

     The layout is basically a point-to-point trackplan. Trains are made up in either the main yard or the seven track hidden staging yard below the coal mine. A train leaving one yard will simply traverse the layout and pull into the track vacated by the train leaving from the other yard. At the time, there are no real plans for running passenger trains, although with 8 Riverossi passenger cars in storage, it would be easy to schedule a fantrip over the layout. I also have a Riverossi Y6b Mallet to pull it!

     Most of the track is on one level with the exception of the branch leading up to the coal mine, and lumber siding, which will be 6" above the main line at it's highest point. The mainline is 48" above the floor, making it easy to work both on and under the layout. All mainline and sidings/yards are laid with Atlas code 100 flex track, and all but 1 turnout, a curved #8LH Shinohara in the street of the main town, are Atlas Custom-Line #4 & #6's. All turnouts will be hand operated with Caboose Industries ground throws, to make operating the layout more realistic. The minimum mainline radius is 22", everywhere else it's a tight 18".

Here we see Gary putting together the first section of benchwork, and also celebrating the first section after installation. We built our benchwork in 'boxes' and then fastened them directly to the wall studs. We found this to be very sturdy, and a quick way to build our layout.
	Now Gary is double checking his measurements before continuing on. We have 4 sections of box-benchwork installed at this point.
In this view we have started installing track that leads to the hidden 7-track staging yard, which will be under a coal mine. We are using Atlas code 100 flex track and custom-line turnouts, as neither of us have time or patience to handlay our railway.
	This photo shows Gary adjusting one of the benchwork boxes in the peninsula section of the layout. The posts in the centre act as support for the layout, as well as for the backdrop.
In this last photo we see the corner where, sometime in the future, will be a curved trestle running between two tunnel portals. The scene will feature floor to ceiling scenery.

     As time goes on I will try to give regular updates as to the progress of the layout. As of mid-November 1996, 1 year after beginning, we have the backdrop up in the main room and painted light blue. Clouds will come next, and maybe even some scenery will go down before the new year begins.