This layout is one that I finished over the holidays, though I’d been tinkering with the design on and off for the past couple of months. I had three primary design goals:
- Design the layout specifically for battery engines. This meant using mechanical switches for the primary track switches and graded supports in place of traditional ramp tracks.
- Include a full amusement park, assembled from the new #33730 Roller Coaster Set and the vintage #33220 Amusement Park and #33221 Merry-go-round sets.
- Have a river running through the center of the layout, or at least a large part of the layout, instead of placing the water along an edge.
The river was formed from standard 12″x12″ scrapbooking cardstock. Each square was cut in half roughly down the middle with a wavy pattern, giving me two shorelines per sheet that were arranged in a winding path. To create the bend, I joined two paths at an angle and used circles to smooth out the joint.
The real challenge was the roller coaster because its large footprint threatened to eat up valuable space that I needed for track. I solved this problem by overlapping the two so that trains passed underneath the coaster.
The town is created from three generations of the Town set: the mid-60’s version with two wide skyscrapers, the 70’s version with one wide skyscraper and the first generation wooden trees, and the 80’s version with the taller and thinner skyscraper that most people are familiar with.
The track plan is shown below (click to enlarge).
