A clean slate in El Dorado

With my whirlwind of locomotives behind, I think I have had enough of the bench time for awhile?

It's time to get back to the layout.  My first target is El Dorado.

When I first started working on El Dorado I had planned it to be a busy location that had a small four track yard, two A/D tracks and the longest siding on the layout.  The plans were to have two locals work out of for the entire layout.  This worked well and we had a lot of fun with it and kept the sessions fun full of operations.

As I have mentioned before, time moves on things started to change.  The sessions slowed and the crews dwindled and I decided to reduce my operations.  With this a lot of changes have and are changing.  El Dorado  is on the list and I have decided to start here.  I am going to try to conform to and hold to the old motto "Less is More".

A few years ago, when El Dorado was in its prime it was hopping place.  Here's an image of what it use to be.

 

I decided that I want to go back to my original plans for the layout with it being nothing more than a backwoods branchline of sort.  This means a lot less traffic and nothing more than a string of small towns with only a few industries being served by a local.  So the yard had to go.

After doing a little doodling I came up with this new look for El Dorado.  Also as I have said in the past, I am not modeling the line exactly so I can make full use of my modelers license. It's not to scale, but it's close enough to get started with.

I'm hoping to get the feeling of a small town with a two lane blacktop running down the middle of town, with a few industries to work, and the tracks passing through the edge of town.

Over the last few days I've ripped up the majority of the tracks and have reduced it to the mainline, passing siding and the two A/D tracks, both of which will be removed in time.

I've got the industries pretty much decided on and their locations, but I need to get a feeling of their size before I can really get down to laying the tracks.  One of them; The Dr. Pepper Dist will be fairly large and will be made up of several building kits that have been added on to the original building over time.  The Depot will remain, but will be an actual kit this time.  For the Maytag warehouse, I'm thinking about using the DPM Wood Furniture kit and for the mill, well it's built and ready to install once I find a location for it.

Tonight I figured I'd better make sure the depot would fit the same location where the stand in has been sitting.  So I dug out the Walthers Clarkesville depot and set the foundation in place, and it fits.  So the tracks won't have to move now.

I started thinking about the Maytag building and where it would sit along the backdrop.  Well that got me thinking about the backdrop.  I should really get it done first?  That means I'll need to get it prepped and ready to paint so it look like this when I'm done.

So tonight I cleared things off and got a clean slate to work with.

The first task will be to remove the panhead screws I used to hold the backdrop in place and replace them with some #6 x 5/8" countersink screws, then patch them with spackling and repaint.  I'm also gonna have to do something with this seam?