Monk Subdivision - Moving Forward

As the year comes to a close, I take some time to reflect upon what as been accomplished over the last twelve months. In the case of the Murray Bay Subdivision, the layout progressed once again at a steady pace and has reached maturity. No need for words, since deeds and pictures do speak for themselves.

A nice and welcoming room

I have also been able to complete a few personal projects such as Stanstead that can be considered as a forerunner for Monk Subdivision and a way to push my skills further. Speaking of skills, I also had the pleasure to see my article on extreme weathering that documents my custom CN snow plow be publish under the care of Scott Thorton who has been a joy to work with him. I think he has some other ideas in store for me and I may soon take up the challenge. Model railroading is indeed taking me where I would have never thought I would go... In a sense, I'm glad to have picked up that hobby when I was a kind.

Building the benchwork piece by piece

That said, the big elephant in the room is indeed the Monk Subdivision. A lot (too much) have been said and written about this tentative layout, but little has been accomplished. The biggest hurdle has always been to deal with the stating yard. To move forward, I built a new 7-1/2 feet x 10 feet room in the basement just for that purpose and it explains why I was relatively quiet over the last week even if there was a lot I wanted to share. It was indeed a battle against myself, procrastination and relying too much on others to do the odd jobs I don't feel comfortable to tackle done by myself. We all know these feelings and sure, I can spend many hours fanning over some great layout build by master modellers but I won't reach that level if I don't put the effort in it. And thus, I cut Internet for a few days to make room for my hobby.

Two holes leading toward a wonderful project...

It started a few weeks ago when it became clear the new room was almost ready, i.e. plywood walls and drop ceiling. It didn't look pretty and felt oppressive. No surprise the architect in me decided to crank it up a few notches to make to make it a nice and comfortable space you want to be for long hours. Why? It had to be bright and cheerful. And also, it will probably be dual purpose to display and operate my small dioramas and modules.

This old Rapido Supercontinental coach is unforgiving!

Building the room took about 2 months and at the end of the day, I elected to wainscot the entire thing, add a few custom made mouldings and install a drop ceiling with powerful LEDs. Honestly, I'm not regretting a single minute my decision to go to such length with this lowly basement room. Because, indeed, I've been spending a full week now building the staging benchwork. Working in a nice environment made it much more interesting and felt less like a chore. I'm also starting to imagine how I will display models in the room and set the storage.

Standardized curves mean standardized roadbed pieces

The benchwork took about 2 days to complete and is made of 1" x 3" pine fastened with pocket screws. I was surprised how fast it went. The next morning, I found out that I made a 1/4" vertical alignment mistake with the main layout in the other room. Fortunately, due to my semi modular approach and use of screws, it only took 30 minutes to realign everything and I was back on schedule. I spent the next few days cutting plywoods, adding shelf brackets and cutting fiberboard. As I worked, I updated my XtrkCAD plan to improve track flow and remove short radius curves as much as was possible, setting a minimum radius not below 27-28".

Joffre yard is taking shape

Laying track was also a straight forward process, even if I redid long sections to increase the radius. My biggest fear was using Walthers Code 83 curved turnouts with 24"/28" radii. I wish I could have used larger turnouts and if possible, Peco ones, but that was a compromise that needed to be done. Fortunately, even my largest 2-10-2 and 6-axles locomotives run fine on them and let me tell you I tested them at full speed and tender first! They aren't not as great as Peco,  but they have solid rail points and decent quality inherited from Shinohara. I also tested them with Branchline heavyweight cars and first generation Rapido Supercontinental cars, both products known to have serious truck issues and they perform OK. Take into account they are really poor runners, so having them naviguate decently and without derailing through the curved turnouts put my mind at ease.

The 2-10-2 didn't mind the curved turnout!

At the moment of writing these lines, Only 4 flextracks remain to be nailed down to complete the first staging yard that will represent CN Joffre in Charny. Louis-Marie has already started to develop a design to control and automate the yard with various electronic modules and detectors. Switch machines are in the mail and should arrive in early January. I can see a lot of experimentation waiting for us, but that's a meaningful challenge I looking forward to.

This refurbished BLI SD40 is testing the yard throat once again...

Also, while thinking about it in the last few days, it has become clear that Mon Subdivision isn't a layout centered on operating a train, but rather about operating a small piece of railway. In some way, this is closer to the European way to do things. And can easily imagine someone in the staging room that acts as a dispatcher and send orders at the station in the main layout room. The person there doesn't "operate" trains, but manage the meets at the station, receiving order, controlling the turnouts and making sure that trains meet as they should and safely. In some way, this isn't surprising because my limited knowledge of Monk Subdivision is generally based on pictures showing train meets, dreadful accidents caused by mistakes in traffic control and the fact it was also a line that received a poorman's ABS signal system that made an impact on local railfans.

I'm also convinced my concept of having only one town on the layout is worthy. I was recently visiting Yvan Déry and I was absolutely convinced that the less you have, the better you are. A single town is immersive and has less compromises, which creates a realistic setup. I remember starting a discussing about one-town layouts many years agon on MRH forums and which was revived and expanded upon by Jim Six. Jérôme who often speaks highly of La Mesa club layout in California had an influence on me because years ago, I watched a very long tour of their layout on YouTube. That feeling of running trains in the middle of nowhere made a big impression on me. We all wish we could have that space for our layout, but we forget that we can get a part of that action by simply modelling a slice of it. I've seen plenty of modellers doing that in recent years, which confirms me it is a viable option.

With all that said and done, I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that 2024 will be a year to nurture your skills and make that hobby a meaningful way to create and grow. The last few years have been quite hard for most people and we should be glad to participate in a constructive hobby that can soothe the mind and steer us away from idleness. This is indeed, a priceless gift!