Plans

Davis-Murdoch Stone Company

June 2023

Davis-Murdoch Trackplan


Reconfiguring operational elements


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Davis-Murdoch is an On30 layout in a 12 x 14 foot room

A shift in focal points

Compare this plan with the plan posted in December 2018. Almost every major element on the layout has shifted to a new position. I was compelled to do this because of the nagging feeling that Davis-Murdoch was no more than the remnant of my previous layout. I didn't want Davis-Murdoch to merely be the Piedmont & East Blue Ridge with its head and feet cut off.

It was very difficult for me to see the layout as anything other than what it had been for years. A few O scale narrow gauge modeling friends put up with a long series of emails from me exploring half baked ideas as I tried to see the smaller layout for what it was. Their feedback made it possible for me to consider reformating the operation.

The setting is still the western piedmont of central Virginia. The theme is still a soapstone operation. But the focal points have been shifted around to fit better on a one room layout. The center of operations is now in the upper right corner. Only one quarry is modeled on the peninsula of the layout with two more quarries unmodeled at the ends of branch lines running off the layout; one to a cassette in the office and the other to a small fiddle yard module that will sit on the workbench in my shop.

Once I came to this conclusion about the placement of the major elements in the stone handling workflows, I was comfortable with the whole concept. I am not making any guarantees – expressed or implied – that the details within each scene will resemble what is represented on this trackplan. But the general arrangement of the major elements should stay where they are shown.