Tap Creek

The Chicago & North Western Tap Creek Branch

 

Name: Chicago & North Western Tap Creek Branch
Scale: N (1:160)
Prototype: Chicago & North Western
Locale: the mid-west
Period: 1960 - 1975
Layout style: shelf, point to point
Layout height: 50 inches (128 cm)
Scenery: extruded foam
Backdrop: Aluminum painted blue with glued on landscape photo
Roadbed: cork
Control: DCC (Lenz Digital Plus)

Size: 20 x 112 inches (50 cm x 285 cm)
Benchwork: Plywood on 1 x ½ inches (2 X 1 cm) girders, resting on a commercially available book-shelf
Track and turnouts: Peco code 55 flextrack and electrofrog turnouts
Length of mainline run: 120 inches (300 cm), but this is mainly a switching layout
Turnout minimum: no. 6 (Peco medium turnouts)
Minimum radius: 15 ½ inches (40 cm)
Maximum grade: 1.5 percent

Size: 12 x 70 inches (180 x 30 cm)
Benchwork: Plywood on a grid of 2½ x ¼ inches (67 X 8 mm) pine
Track and turnouts: Handlaid Micro Engineering code 40 nickel silver rail
Length of mainline run: 12 inches (180 cm), but this is a junction only
Turnout minimum: no. 6
Minimum radius: No real curves. Only turnouts.
Maximum grade: no grades

Welcome to Tap Creek

Latest updates:

· January 3, 2010: Site republished in order to try to fix a Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 compatibility problem.

· March 25, 2008: New Blog about the new Summit layout.

· March 12, 2008: Proto:87 wheels on the H0 boxcar.

· February 28, 2008: I have just completed a cool H0 boxcar kit. See it here, or turn to the Projects page.

· January 13, 2008: Photos of  two dioramas I built a few years ago. You find them in the new Dioramas section.

· November 25, 2007: New layout photos. See them in the Photos section.