For years I have been thinking and drawing and thinking of creating a layout at home. Already back in the late 80’s I started building the frame for a 4x8 layout, which I was still in the process of creating. I never got past the frame construction, due to a move to a smaller apartment. By the time we were into a house which gave me the necessary space, the frame had been long gone.

In 2001 I salvaged an old layout which was 4x17. I managed to restore to functioning condition, but it was old and needed a complete rebuilding. Again, I managed to start this rebuild when another move was necessary.

This time I had to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new design. Initially I went back to the 4x8, but quickly realized I was not going to enjoy it running as I would building it.

I started playing with around the room sketches. Satisfied that this format was more suitable to having longer runs and larger radius curves, I set to place the layout to a locale, and an era.

My passion is the Southern Pacific, and the Italian FS railways. I went back and forth deciding to build an SP layout, or a Riviera Ligure (that’s the north-western coast of Italy) layout.

The two would have been very different in nature, being the SP operation oriented, the FS layout would have been more of a show layout with a through station on one side and a hidden yard at the opposite, with two scenery runs in between.

Earlier in 07 I participated at operation sessions on three separate layouts, and I discovered I liked it very much. The decision was taken then, to go for an SP layout with operation in mind. (I figured I could always build a new level and put the FS layout on top of the SP layout …)

I had been keen to the Santa Cruz branch line for a long time, having even worked in Santa Cruz for a few years. I started drawing sketches of possible track work, but nothing was catching my fancy. Eventually I ended up with a three level layout, point to point, from Watsonville to Davenport. I sat back and started looking at what I had done.

Aahh, the beauty of innocence. This was going to be my first serious layout, with almost no knowledge and hands on experience on building one, and I was going to have a three level layout? Right!

I put this one aside, for future consideration.

Time went by and nothing concrete was coming. Then I found the Heart of Georgia, or HOG for short. This was a project to get away from “Oh no, not another 4x8” from the MR magazine.

It struck me as perfect for what I was looking for. Aside for being the right size for the layout room, I liked the concept, being modular in nature. I did not need to calculate and design a frame for it, since it was already done by the project.

I worked on the original design and came up with a decent renaming of the towns and spurs to ones on the branch line. I also talked about it to a few friends and all approved.

Hence here started my first layout.

Leo

Hello all.

This is my first posting in my blog. So I will not put much here now.

This blog will account the progress of my HO layout called the Santa Cruz Branch Line.

This layout is derived from an internet project called the HOG (Heart of Georgia).

and there is also a Yahoo! group.

That is it for now.

Jan 2013 Edit: Changed link to the HOG blog.