It’s been a long time coming since I dismantled my The Piedmont Division Model Railroad in North Carolina in 2017 . We moved back to the Gulf Coast area in 2018 to be closer to our hometown, and tending/caregiving to our aging parents.

Six years later, and with things settling down, along with my semi-retirement, I’ve spent quite a bit of effort and time in the past year or so devising a new plan of action. I wanted to model the Norfolk Southern again, but the divisions that services our area, which includes the N.O. & N.E. District. My ambitious plan is to model the NS AGS South District and N.O. & N.E. District, from Birmingham, AL to New Orleans, LA. , which is 340+/- miles of track.

Feeling a bit of analysis paralysis, I pulled out my collected issues of model railroading publications and I found inspiration in the Layout Design Journal #40, from Fall 2010. Specifically, the article “Layout Design Step-By-Step Draw no line before it is time”, by Byron Henderson, his article gave me the tools I needed to get the plan jump started.

This article gave me the direction I needed to put down my conceptual drawing of what I wanted to model. I know its quite an ambitious plan, as it includes 28 LDEs, not including passing sidings, and other elements. I’ve got some decision to make as I start work on the structural phase of the plan. And that is where I’m at in the progress, I have started building my staging lower level that will hold staged consists from the N.O. & N.E. side of the layout.