July 14th, 2024 1PM EDT

Recording now uploaded see links below

The Layout Design SIG is a place where new ideas and new thinking come to flourish. We are all interested in making our layouts fun, functional, satisfying, and unique. Our current methods, design process, and best practices are adequate for achieving these goals, but what are we missing? What other ideas, methods, and processes have we not fully embraced? What other approaches can we use to come up with a design that is truly unique, that display our beloved models in a different light, that allow us to showcase them in a way that makes our layouts unique and distinctive? This clinic promises to demonstrate the search for, and application of, often-overlooked sources and concepts to influence design and construction for the layout, the Jersey Central’s Newark Branch.

Located in a Brooklyn apartment and depicting a short, but intensely busy, branchline of the Jersey Central, this prototype-based, shelf-style switching layout has been a challenge and a joy to design, build, and operate. From its initial construction to the current day, the layout has experienced one move and is undergoing an expansion into Version 2 of the CNJ Newark Branch. While the primary focus of this virtual clinic will be on the unique approach to prototype modeling, it will also cover the layout’s design, track planning, moving the layout into a new space, and progress on the expansion.

Jonathan Jones

YouTube link to the recording

Link to presentation

Slides