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