Farmington - Dirt Road and Gas Station Placement

Once I had the overall track plan for the Farmington section planned out, I then decided on where the dirt road and gas station were going to be located.  I cut a cork pad and laid out the general path for the dirt road and used more of the cork pad for the footprint of the gas station.  The gas station is a white metal kit from Woodland Scenics.  My father actually put the kit together several years ago when he had an HO scale layout based on the Sierra Railroad and the Pickering Lumber Company.

Cork Pads for Dirt Road and Gas Station

Test Fitting Gas Station Scene

My father's layout was a shelf style layout that took up an entire wall of the two car garage.  I remember running this layout when I was in high school.  The layout ran on a stationary DC power pack with several blocks for multiple train operation (DCC was just beginning to grow back then).  The layout was set back in the 20's and 30's and ran from the town of Standard up a switchback through the mountains to the logging camps.

My favorite trains to run were his Shays and Heislers.  My father had a roundhouse 2-truck Shay, a Bachmann Spectrum 3-truck Shay, a Rivarossi 2-Truck Heisler and a Rivarossi 3-truck Heisler.  These four geared steam locomotives were lettered for the Pickering Lumber Company.

That layout is long gone now and my father has converted over to Lionel.  Fortunately for me, he gave these locomotives to me along with a lot of his other HO scale items from that layout.  Of course, I am not going to be running those Shays and Heislers on my layout.  The two Shays at least have plugs for a DCC decoder, but I do not know how to convert those older style Heislers he got back in the 70's/80's.

I'll have to get theses locomotives out of the storage box I have them in and take pictures for a future post on this blog.