Rat Hole

The paper is dog eared and yellowing in places, it even feels old. This is an old, old scheme I entitled "Rat Hole". Quite how old this doodling is I don't know. It might even pre-date my emigration to the USA. Back then I had this notion that American railroads were all street running and sharp curves with lines appearing between houses and crossing roads and running down the middle of streets at will. Quite how I came up with the name Rat Hole I don't know as its only recently that I've discovered the SP Alameda "Rat Hole". I must have read the term in an article in an old issue of Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman. Once I moved to America and experienced Modern US Railroads for real I saw things weren't necessarily like that anymore. I still think its a good idea though. 

Looking at it with another 13 or so years of Micro layout design behind me I still like it, It still makes me think. If I came up with this concept when I think I did, then the term "Micro Layout" hadn't even been popularised, perhaps even thought of. I visualised it as quite intensely scenic with all the buildings on it. It could also be described as a "concrete canyon" layout. Watching the layout, locos and cars appear and disappear between buildings forcing the viewer to continually change their viewpoint, they are even able to watch the train come towards them hiding the fact that this is quite a small layout. 

In posting this scheme I decided to see what sort of size the layout could be. I laid down some N scale track I have "acquired" and discovered that the layout will comfortably fit in a 30" x 15" space if you chose to use a sector plate in the fiddle yard area. It's even feasible to put it in an APA box.

Just a little something to get the creative juices going.

By way of a post script here's some handy dandy links to some inspiring photographs:
The Rat Hole Job
Whats the Rat Hole?
The Kingsbury Branch in N scale
Chicago Switching 
That should be enough to keep you going for a while. It's certainly started tugging on my grey matter for the moment and having recently acquired a load of N scale stuff. I could very easily build such a layout with the minimum of outlay...