Casino

This is my second layout based on the town of Casino New South Wales (NSW), and the North Coast Line, set in the 1970s. The first version of ‘Casino’ was featured in AMRM issue No. 329 April 2018; this layout was dismantled when I moved house in 2011. Some years after moving, I started on ‘Casino Redux’, a bigger and better version of the same design elements used in the first layout. The main lessons learnt from the first layout were:

• Hidden track – the staging yard and a lot of interconnecting main line was hidden. There were too many design elements, such as stations which were squeezed in, and the separation between each design element was not ideal. It was difficult to access some of the hidden track, including the staging yard. This made operations and maintenance challenging. • Duck-unders – the operation of the old layout was achieved from the inner well in the centre of the layout. This meant having to duck under the layout to get in, causing bumped heads and much angst. • Peco insulfrog points – these were used throughout on the old layout, but I decided to use Peco electrofrog points on the new layout. Peco unifrog points became available towards the end of construction of the new layout, and if I had my time again, I would use the new Peco Unifrog points from the outset as they make point wiring much simpler. • Using helixes – the old layout featured a double deck configuration with the staging yard on the lower deck. To get from the upper layout deck down to staging required a double track helix, which was difficult to construct with precision, and meant long periods of time not being able to see the train you are operating. • Flow – in general the old layout was too cramped and there was not enough visible space between stations, and the lower deck staging yard and hidden track areas made it difficult for novice operators to follow where their train was, or to know when it was going to appear. • The new layout is contained in a bigger area, allowing me to create an ‘around the walls’ style layout with two inner peninsulas; the overall layout shape is a so called ‘inverted dog bone’. With the lessons learnt, I set about construction of the layout room in 2014. Work on the actual layout started in 2015 and has taken approximately six years to complete.