C
Mississippi Valley Associated Railroaders
Within the Carleton Place and Surrounding Area Since 1987
MY HOME LAYOUT
By: Frank Habenicht
Videos and Photos by Webmaster
PART 2 - RUNNING & TWEAKING
Well as the Webmaster I always try to unleash the great talents within the club Membership. If your following along, I have two home layouts which
are currently being developed at the moment: Bob Middlebrooks and this one by Frank. In this section we will be concentrating on Franks great
model home layout. Frank is electrician by trade and wiring a great layout comes easy. He had a layout in Kitchener Ontario where he had built a helix
a large part of this layout. Frank informed me that he had started this layout in December 2023, but being real busy in 2024 never had a chance to
work on it until recently.
Completing the track work and soldering all the joints, then scenery was added using hydrocal, following that by the ballast of the track. I was invited
to the layout on March 8th 2025 which was great as I gathered the following materials for his Phase 2. WOOZA!! I was handed a controller on DC Power
plus and play which was running a 30 car coal drag. There was a problem coming down the helix with that many cars entering the Main level yard.
Eventually Franks cut off some coal cars and loaded two switches engines onto the cars and said he was going to make it interesting. Now he has the
switchable panel and throwing a few switches changed the loops and suddenly I was operating two trains at the same rate of speed. For some reason
the rail cars were derailing and Frank was able to chase it. One car had a wheel set out of alignment. Well I was impressed with two trains running,
Frank then shows up with a three coach VIA Rail, all running off the single controller. Frank then tells me with the other controller he can operate other
trains to service the industries which will be set up. Just phenomenal layout to be a
club Feature.
Once the bugs have been ironed out, members can go to his place to run trains. Frank thanks for the opportunity to host your Home Layout to the
MVAR Membership.