I started planning my railroad in December, 1998 and started actual construction in February, 1999.
I had intended on keeping it fairly small and simple, but after looking at many layouts in magazines, I
decided I wanted something as large as I could make it so I cleaned out a basement storeroom and started
drawing plans. The layout area is 15' by 22' and while I thought this was large at the time, I've found that
with everything I wanted to include in the layout, this area was getting smaller and smaller. I considered
N-scale at first in order to "expand" the area, but my large hands and poor eyes precluded that idea.

I've ended up with an HO-scale, purely fictitious modern era railroad. It's new name is the North Shelby Division of the
Norfolk Southern Railroad and of course I'm using Norfolk Southern as my primary roadname, along with it's various
merged roads, such as Southern and Conrail. I also included a local coal hauling line, Birmingham Southern. I may have an
interchange with CSX. The primary industries have to do with power distribution. There is a coal mine, an oil refinery
and an electric power plant. There will also be a small town modeled after a local track-side town, Helena, that has
re-furbished it's older buildings.

The layout is controlled by Digitrax DCC. I'm currently using a DCS100 command station with a DBD150 booster
and PM4 power manager. Currently all the loco's have decoders and most of the mainline turnout motors are
controlled by DS54's. Eventually I hope to include block detection.  The following pages have some pictures
of my locomotives, a lot of construction pictures of various areas I've either finished or am currently working
on, and a track plan which also includes  pictures of the layout

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