Starting up again - new home, second layout, Dead Rail experiment

It's been a while since I posted an entry, quite a while.  Once we decided in January 2014 that we would move this year, all work on the layout effectively ended.  Now we're in a new home in the model railroad mecca of Beamsville, ON (no, really, we have a fantastic hobby shop in town and some of the best modellers around), and work has resumed.

When we left our home, I had installed all the modules in our family room on a metal shelf bracket system and laid the track through most of Elmira.  A lighting valance hiding T5 fluorescent bulbs was also installed.  It looked very promising, as shown in this in-progress view:

However, I ran into problems with the trackwork, primarily related to the rail popping off the CV ties strips.  We'll get into that issue in another post.

We moved into a home with an unfinished basement, so naturally I was paralyzed again reconsidering how to best adapt the track plan to my new space, even my choice of prototype was up for grabs.  Over the summer I did make a set of three very lightweight modules to build a scale model of CN's Pine Street spur following an inspiration in Trevor Marshall's Achievable Layouts blog (http://themodelrailwayshow.com/LayoutDesign/?p=2070).  Three turnouts in 12 ft and I could model the mill complex in exact scale length.

I'm still undecided on whether to complete that concept, but with a Tam Valley DRS receiver and transmitter expected any day now, I can always lay the track down held together only with rail joiners and a few tacks, and operate and experiment to my heart's content.  I may still build this as something to take to shows, as Trevor suggested, if only to demonstrate the battery operation to the masses.

For now I'm putting up the drywall in the first basement room to be finished.  Nominally it will be a guest room, but practically speaking it will become the home of Elmira, ON on the CNR ca. 1988.  As it should be.  Questions abound as to layout height (I'm thinking high, i.e. 60"), room & layout lighting (LED strip vs. T5), duckunders, how much to intrude into the room space (i.e. along three walls or go for all four) and the aforementioned question of reliable track laying.  And I suppose also of whether to wire the layout for conventional DCC operation.  All things to be considered in due time.  If you have any thoughts and experiences to share regarding the above, I'd love to hear about and discuss them with you.

ttfn