The inspiration for this layout comes from the "pizza" style layouts on Carl Arendt's website www.carendt.com. The challenge of building a pizza layout is to take a simple circle of track and make it into an interesting layout. I became fascinated by these layouts, and, since they fall in with my "Smaller is Better" philosophy, I decided to build one.
The layout measures 2' x 2'. The track is 9 3/4" radius Kato Unitrack. The lighthouse is from Dollar Tree. The house is a ceramic building my wife bought for $1.50. The palm trees are plastic models I bought at AC Moore.
Scenically, the layout was inspired by the western shore of Escambia Bay, Florida where the L&N Railroad hugs the shoreline below large red clay cliffs. I found the eroding clay to be interesting to model and a bit different from the usual rock faces seen on most layouts.
Overall, I have found the Bear Point to be a very satisfying project. I'm more of a builder than an operator, so the simplicity of the track plan was a benefit. I was able to get the basic scenery up in a short time without having the "plywood plains" look of the larger layouts I had built before. Even though the layout is pretty much complete, there are always more details that can be added.
Bear Point Photo Gallery
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