Well, it's been almost a year and much has happened.  The old HO layout is dismantled and gone, declining eyesight and the desire to do more scratchbuilding finally having pushed me to favour O scale, 30 inch narrow gauge as my standard.

The footprint once occupied by the HO layout is now home to the expanded SR&RL (Salmon Run & Robson Landing), and the space previously occupied by the SR&RL has been reclaimed for other activities. I preserved much of the lower level benchwork of the HO layout, and two-thirds of the helix leading to the upper level, but the trackage other than in the helix was newly laid, phoenix-like from the ashes of the HO pike.  Instead of a full-fledged upper level covering all of the layout, I preserved a small portion, suitably lowered since it only covers hidden staging now, for a logging camp.

The track plan is simple compared to the HO layout: a simple loop to loop allowing continuous running (thanks to the magic of DCC), with a branch heading up the shorter helix.  The visible loop encompasses the tide-water town of Robson Landing, complete with dock scene.  The hidden loop, with a stub staging as well, represents all points inland, mainly the fictional connection to the fictional Esquimalt & Nanaimo terminus at Campbell River, Vancouver Island.  In between the town of Salmon Run serves as the junction between the Salmon Run Lumber (SRL) tracks up-mountain and the SR&RL track to tide-water and the sawmill.

As of this date, all track has been laid, wired and is running.  Hidden turnouts or those out of reach have been motorized with Tortoise machines, hooked into Digitrax DS-64 stationary decoders for full DCC operation.  The turntable at Salmon Run, an Atlas HO "grinder" about as prototypical as a full grown Yorkie on an On30 layout has been modified to look like a covered-pit, gallows type O scale narrow gauge turntable.  With a TCS-1 decoder, it is also controlled via DCC.  It still sounds like the old Atlas, but looks much, much better.  A second small turntable is planned for the SRL logging camp, but after the painful weeks it took to build the first one, my plan to use another Atlas as base has been jettisoned.  I think I prefer to scratchbuild.

In the next while, I shall introduce the motive power.  The last year has been fertile in loco modifications (HO to On30) and critter building.