Up to this point, I have been working diligently to fabricate turnouts for the layout and although it’s been going well, it’s not without its setbacks. Firstly, scratch building turnouts takes time, and when you are investing that much time into one small aspect of the overall project, you risk the chance that you’ll start to rethink previous decisions – which is what has happened in this case.

While I am happy with the overall plan, and the nice modelling variety it has to offer, I’m not sure if it really addresses my goals: to test the waters of N scale by building a small, portable layout. Although the layout is only the size of a door, it’s not as small as I thought – and certainly not portable as far as ease of transportation is concerned. Secondly, I don’t really want to have to wire the return loop, and the corresponding circuits as my wiring solution would require me to switch blocks back and forth for continuous running, and I know that at some point I will simply want to sit and watch the trains go round and round.

Finally, it has become necessary to gut and refinish a portion of our basement. If ever there was a time not to have a model railroad in the midst of demolition, this would be the time.

Therefore, the Unfinished & Uncertain has been absorbed by another future railroad. The U&U equipment will be put in storage, and the track will have become bike paths.