The Casco Bay Northern Railroad is set along the Mid Coast
of Maine in 1960. This layout is a point to point, double deck
around the walls railroad.
Layout Description
The Casco Bay Northern RR (CBN) has three staging yards. All of the staging yards are stub ended. Rigby Yard to the South and Northern Maine Junction to the North. Each has 12 twelve tracks. The staging is mostly visible. At this time Rigby Yard has a camera to assist in train movement.
The third staging yard is a seven track yard approximately in the middle of the run. This yard is fed from either direction by a Wye. This yard also has a camera to assist in train movement.
The layout rises as you travel from South Portland to Bangor. There is a small 2 turn helix on the north end of Searsport to finish the rise to the upper level. The highest point on the layout is between Bucksport and Orrington.
The layout is basically around the wall in two rooms to become L-shaped. One room is approximately 50' x 15'. The other section is about 23' x 16'. The aisle's minimum width is 30" to get to the back area where it opens up into a much larger space. There is approximately a 8 foot open space in the back area.
All mainline tracks have occupancy detection and all cars have resistor wheels on both trucks. The entire main line is signaled. There is a dispatcher in front of a computer, using JMRI and a system from Dil Huey that emulates C/MRI.
Communication is via a phone system as written by Seth Neumann (with some modifications) in the Op Sig magazine The Dispatchers Office.
Statistics
Mainline - 100%
Sidings - 100%
Scenery -60%
Signaling - 100%
Detectable Rolling Stock - 100%
Phone System - 100%
Operation & Car Forwarding
Car forwarding is done with card cards. I use the 5 position method, which means that the waybill gets removed after the fourth move and the car returns empty to its home location. I believe this method of Car Cards will allow for the greatest flexibility. The cars are not limited to 4 destinations. When a car gets back to its home location it will get a new waybill, which might be a different one than the last time. The only requirement is the the car type of the waybill matches the car. The more cars of a given type the more variations of places that car can go.
Operational Positions
Dispatcher
Brunswick Yardmaster
Brunswick Assistant
Searsport Yardmaster
Road Crew (4-5)
Controls
Trains are controlled with DCC from NCE.
Car forwarding is being performed using Ship It Car Cards from Albion Software.
A Fast Clock is being used from GML Enterprises.
Train detection is compatible with C/MRI by Dil Huey.
Computer I/O is performed by components from Dil Huey and JMRI.
Signals come from Oregon Rail Supply, Integrated Signal Systems and Tomar Industries.
Circuit Breaker and Auto Reversing is controlled with components from DCC Specialties.
Comments and Suggestions
Please send your comments telling me what you think about this page and how I might improve it.