City Classics Roadshow Layout
Original article at Carl Arendt's Small Layout Scrapbook is here -->
10-FOOT DISPLAY LAYOUT FEATURES THE GS&S PLAN
The largest of our "small" Gum-Stump-inspired layouts was built by Jim Sacco, from Pittsburgh, USA, who is the proprieter of City Classics HO building kits. Jim designed and built the layout to display his line of kits, and incorporated the Gum Stump & Snowshoe pattern because it "added some operation to what is essentially a simple loop." Actually, it adds a lot of operation!
The 10x3 ft (300x90 cm) layout is built on two custom-made mirror-image baseboards that travel in Jim's car to train shows around the country. Unusually for a switchback layout, the line operates in an urban switching district rather than in a rural or industrial park setting.
Ironically, Jim produced the track plan independently and did not know about the GS&S when he designed it! Only after viewers kept remarking about the "Gum Post and Horseshoe" design did Jim look up the layout in one of the Kalmbach books of plans. The photos here were taken at the Amherst Railway Society's Hobby Show in Springfield Massachusetts in January 2005. Jim is constantly adding new details, and the much-enhanced layout will be on display at the NMRA's huge National Train Show in Cincinnati in early July.
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Editor's Note: At least two other variations on the Gum Stump plan are posted elsewhere on the Net. Eric Hansmann's HO Vandalia Short Line adds runaround loops at each end of the switchback. Geren Mortensen's The Little Layout (under "Small") includes a continuous circuit underneath the switchback in a 3x8 ft (90x240 cm) On30 design. Anyone have another link we should add?
