Board, sitting at home waiting for the big dump of snow were are supposed to get…

My first layout after leaving home was a small switching layout that ran around the perimeter walls of my basement. The plan came from a mid 1990’s Model Railroader article in which author David Barrow described a plan for a small layout based on Santa Fe operations. I originally constructed the layout in the basement of a rental home, then moved it to a different home and added onto it. I used 40 and 50 foot box cars and GE 44 Ton locos (from Bachman) to make the layout feel larger than it really was. Few photos of it exist, but here’s what I could find:

Main yard of layout, with diesel shop in the background

2 Overland GMD1’s switch the yard, I traded these 2 models away years ago…

An Overland M640 sits with 2 OMI C630’s. All were sold off, and I wish I had kept the M640 as its getting quite hard to find. I did find one for sale recently, but no funds were available to purchase the model! One day I will have the 4744 once again!

This layout was torn down, and replaced with an On30 D&RGW:

Chama Yard, under construction

Track and turnouts were handlaid Code 83. Turnouts were built using Fast Track jigs.

Cumbres The hole in the wall was to be covered by a wooden snowshed as per prototype

And I actually had some scenery at Loboto:

As I explained in another post, I soon grew tired of the On30 layout and tore it down in favor of a BC Rail layout. The On30 equipment was sold off to finance some BCR motive power and freight cars.