Lockwood & San Emigdio 1: First Steps

After a couple of years of planning and delays, I've finally taken the first steps toward building the "big" Lockwood & San Emigdio layout.

Here's the track plan. Is it perfect? Heck, no. I'm sure I'll have second, third, twentieth thoughts. But at some point ya got to call it good enough and start building.

This new layout is going on a section of benchwork left over from my old HO Bakersfield & Ventura. That layout was mostly disassembled 20 years ago and the remaining bench work has been used for storage.

The first step was to clear the boxes of Christmas decorations and old books out of the way and find new homes for them. That's going to be an ongoing project in itself.

Some of the old, hand laid HO track was still in place, though in rough shape, so that needed to be removed. It's mostly gone now. I've been vacillating between building on a traditional plywood base or putting down a layer of foam; at this moment I am leaning toward sticking with plywood, using some of what's already there. I need to do a bit more cleanup if I decide to go that route.

The brackets supporting the upper shelf intrude into the layout space more than I like. I'm going to replace them with some different brackets, and raise the shelf a bit, to get them at least somewhat out of the way.

Once I got the plywood mostly cleared off, I couldn't resist setting some track temporarily in place, along with the water tank and an engine, just to get a sense of scale. First impression: After building a series of minis, it's nice to have a larger space to work in.

I ended up going with Micro Engineering track. It's expensive, but looks much better than any of the alternatives. It seems less rugged than Peco, but I think it will be workable if I'm careful.

I need to modify one section of benchwork, where I plan to have a large-ish canyon with a trestle, then buy another sheet of plywood to fill in some missing areas. I also want to put in a backdrop -- at least a smooth, sky blue surface. Then I'll be ready for  trackwork, probably a couple of weeks from now.

6/9/25: I cleared off the last of the old track and made some modifications to the shelf above the layout. Tomorrow or the next day I'll cut some new plywood sub-roadbed and test fit. Later in the week I'll modify the benchwork where the canyon is going to go.

6/11/25: Cutting of the plywood sub-roadbed is about 90 percent done, and I've started installing it. I may install cork roadbed and track on the right end curve roadbed before I screw the roadbed in place. Other than that, large scale track laying will probably start by the end of next week.

6/13/25: All the roadbed is cut and ready to install. I modified the benchwork at the left end where the canyon will be. The trestle will be on a 21 inch radius curve, about 21 inches long, and 12 inches tall; I may drop the base a few more inches. For now, there's a temporary plywood bridge across the gap.

Here's an overall view.  Forgive the clutter.

I even put down some cork roadbed in a couple of areas, and will continue to work on that, bit by bit, over the weekend. Other than that, I probably won't get much done the next couple of days, due to other demands on my time; but on Monday I'll install risers (the rear track is going to be elevated an inch and a half) then fasten down all the sub roadbed. Tuesday or Wednesday I'll add the backdrop, and by Friday I should be ready to lay some track.

6/16/25: Backdrop going in. This is a type of insulation board, basically beadboard type foam with a thin plastic facing (like mylar). I used it because it's only 1/2 inch thick, and it's really cheap, but frankly it's not great to work with. If my home center had 1/2 inch XPS I'd probably use that. 

Anyway, it's half done; I'm letting the caulk dry a bit, then I'll do the other half. Tomorrow or the next day I'll go get some sky blue paint for it.

6/17/25: Backdrop installed, primer coat of light gray applied. I need to get some sky blue paint tomorrow.

6/18/25: Painted the backdrop light blue. It probably needs a second cost. I may add some silhouette mountains at some point.

6/20/25: The arrangement of the brewery spur and the turntable lead has never quite looked right, and when I test fitted the track I could see it just wasn't going to fly. So I'm considering some alternatives. Here's a different arrangement using the same turnouts:

The flow looks better and there's more room for the Main Street buildings. The tradeoff is the brewery is now over where I had planned to put a mountain -- though as built, the left end of the yard is a foot farther to the right than in the drawing. Maybe the brewery can be built into the hillside. A bigger concern is the the switchback track arrangement isn't convenient for switching and would probably be avoided in real life.

This one is more logical, but pushes the brewery track even farther to the left. The main issue here is that I would need to buy another left-hand turnout. Then again, I'm going to need to get more flex track anyway, so I'll be placing an order soon. What's another $40, amiright?

6/21/25: Settled on the last one, which is the cleanest. It occured to me that the "future expansion" switch wasn't going to serve much purpose in the foreseeable future, so I removed it and used it for the brewery spur instead. I put a short length of flex track in its place, so if and when I decide to add that spur, I can easily swap a switch back in.