Welcome, this page is an introduction to the layout I started to design in 2017, and started building in 2018. This page provides a bit of a high-level introduction, and collects links to each of the Blog Posts I have made related to the layout.
Liberty Village, an industrial area in the west end of downtown Toronto is prototype for my layout, being built in a spare bedroom of our townhouse. The area developed in the early 20th century, located between the CNR and CPR main lines into Union Station in Toronto. It was home to numerous large industries, the largest of which being Inglis and Massey-Harris are too big for my layout. It offers an amazing mix of industrial architecture, and a rare space where both CNR and CPR shared trackage to serve industries. I am still working on developing an understanding of how they actually worked and interacted, but there are ample opportunities to create prototypical-ish operating schemes and sessions for friends while I continue to research how it was actually operated.
I am setting my layout in the late 1950’s. I know some gnash at that lack of date specificity. And truth be told, so do I. I simply haven’t set a date yet. I am making decisions that right now, are keeping my options to 1957 or 1958 in terms of vehicles and rolling stock in use. By the time I am done, I will have settled on a date to at least a month. Based on scenery choices, It will be spring, likely April-May, beyond that, it continues to evolve as I build and research.
Construction of benchwork started in August 2018, all the posts on the gestation of the railroad are collected below and updated regularly with new entries! Check back here, as this page and the history above is still a work in progress too.
Liberty Village Line trackplan as of August 21, 2018.
Benchwork in place as of August 18, 2018 and full steam ahead with construction and fine tuning the track plan!
The layout as of August 11, 2021, starting to look like something with structures and scenery moving ahead.
I hope you find the project interesting and I am very much looking forward to continue to share the project with you as construction commences!!
BLOG POSTS
I have tried to organize all the posts on the blog in the list below into general areas or topics. You can also search, but I figured it might be handy if you found your way to this page too.
Track Plan/Design
- Introduction to the Apartment Office/Layout Room
- Introduction to the Prototype: Liberty Village, Toronto
- The Industries of Liberty Village in the 1950’s
- Track Plan Version 1.0
- Track Plan Version 1.5
- Vintage Railway Forms for Operation
- Buildings of Liberty Village 1 – Brunswick Balke Collender (40 Hanna Ave)
- Buildings of Liberty Village 2 – Sunbeam Incandescent Lamp Company of Canada (219 Dufferin St)
- Buildings of Liberty Village 3 – Hinde and Dauche Paper Company (43 Hanna Ave)
- The Fate of Liberty Village Trackplan Version 1.0
- A new Layout Room – Starting to Design for the Liberty Village Line 2.0
- Day Job and Hobby Time Collide: Researching Information on Structures on the City Website
- The Waiting is the Hardest Part
- Liberty Village Line Plan 2.0 Details and Thoughts
- Layout Design Elements – Getting Closer to Building Benchwork
- Designing a Traverser for the Staging Yards
- First Layout Track laid…Sort of!!
- My first Fast Tracks Order
- Foaming the Layout and Testing the Peninsula
- Mocking Up Liberty Village
- Saturday at the Toronto Archives and a walk in Liberty Village
- First Steps into Digital Command Control
- What a difference a Year Makes!
- Peninsular Musings
- Closet Organization
- The Buildings of Liberty Village 4 – The Toronto Carpet Company (43 Hanna Ave)
- Liberty Village in 2005
- A Call for Photo Searching Help – Pardee Avenue, Liberty Village
- Layout Research, Hollywood Style
- Eureka!!! It Exists The E.W. Gillett Mill and Elevator!!
- A quick update to Layout Wayfinding
Layout Construction
- Layout Room!!
- My First Switch Machine
- I’ve got a hatchback full of lumber….
- Benchwork (or at least most of it) in a Day
- Fascia Makes the Benchwork
- Walking into the Layout Room
- Taking the Track Plan from the Screen to the Benchwork
- I love mail to start the weekend
- Boxing in a Corner to start the backdrop
- Backdrop Part 1
- Backdrop Part 2
- Backdrop Part 3
- Blue Skies in Liberty Village
- A Mini Milestone – The First Train on the Liberty Village Line
- Whoo-Hoo!! A Mistake in Layout Building
- Saturday Nights all right for Layout Progress
- Another Saturday, and some more benchwork progress
- Filling in the Last Gap around the wall
- First Track Laid for Liberty Village
- Brunswick Balke Collender Power House
- Never Stop Learning…But Never Forget Past Learning – The Tale of the Blue Bendy
- A Water Tower for Hinde & Dauch Paper
- From a Wall Hanging to My Layout, The Bat’leth of Switches
- First Track Laid
- A freight shed and learning to Cast Resin
- Completing the Staging Transfer Table (Round 1)
- First Steps into Digital Command Control
- Canadian Pacific Staging – Saturday Work Session
- Two Working Staging Yards
- Today Was a Good Day to Lay Track
- More Sunday Trackwork
- Working on a Freight Shed
- A Peninsula to finish the Benchwork
- More Peninsula Progress
- A Sunday full of Small Projects
- Sunday Projects and Trackwork Progress
- Another 32″ of Track Down
- A quick Boxing Day Project
- Wayfinding in the Layout Room
- Preparing for a Weekend Work Session
- Saturday Layout Working Party
- Turns out Sunday is a layout day too
- The “Last Spike” on Liberty Village
- Fascia for a Finished Look
- Fascia Covering for the Layout Part 2
- I Juiced a Frog…
- Some Days are more fun than others
- When Layouts attack and things don’t work
- Cheap and Cheerful Scenery in an Evening
- Electrical Gremlins
- Building Brunswick Balke Collender (Part 1)
- Finishing the Wiring, Gremlin Hunting & Layout Visitors
- Starting some Scenery
- Drawing Building Foundations
- Starting the 3D Window Making Process
- The Start of Scenery for Liberty Village
- Starting to build roads in Liberty Village
- Paving HO Scale Roads Part 2
- Mixing up Ballast for the Layout
- Sometimes you buy the wrong supplies
- Building Building Foundations
- Resin Casting on my Own
- Finding Things that Didn’t work
- Quick Layout Progress/Status Update
- Modelling Fences, from Chain Link to Board to Corrugated Steel
- Windows for the Hinde and Dauch Box Factory
- Rebuilding the Water Tower for Hinde and Dauch
- A Smokestack for Hinde & Dauch
- A 42 Hour Foundry
- Finishing the Mock-up Buildings
- Finishing some various Layout projects
- Working my way up to installing Switch Machines
- Installing the first Bullfrog Switch Machine
- A three hour structure build – Exide Batteries of Canada
- Lighting the Layout, an overdue task
- Installing More Bullfrogs
- Checking Layout Clearances
- Sometimes a little does a lot
- Base Scenery on the CNR Staging Yard
- Two years on from Benchwork in a Day
- Urban Wildlife in HO Scale
- From the Lynn Valley to Liberty Village
- Lighting for the Layout
- Making a Scene
- A quick “kick shelf” in the corner
- Starting to learn a new skill – Static Grass
- Home Made Static Grass Tufts
- A week off work full of small projects
- Sunday Putterings
- Reclaiming my Layout Room for the Holidays
- One little Project at a time
- Don’t be afraid to undo things
- Slow and Steady Scenic Process
- Make a Template you dope
- Making a Start on Painting Buildings
- Sometimes Little Things go a long way
- An April Sunday Night Omnibus Update
- Painted & Decalled “Painted” Wall Signs
- See Through Layout Edge Buildings
- Two more Buildings well on their way
- Saturday Switching Tracks
- Three Years of Liberty Village
- I mended something!
- Progress Painting Buildings
- Switch Stands for Liberty Village
- Advancing Scenes in Liberty Village
- A Resin Kit Fire Truck Build
- When things don’t go right
- Recovering from a Scenery Fail
- So Many Windows
- A new Cutting Tool for the Workshop
- Making headway with the Cricut on cutting walls
- Cutting Vinyl Windows
- Windows & Signs for Hinde & Dauch
- Finally Hiding the last of the Foam
- Constant Steady Progress on Buildings
- Quick General Scenery Update
- Four Years of Construction Progress on Liberty Village
- More Layout Wayfinding Signage
- Moving on to the next Building
- Don’t be afraid to do things over
- More Buildings, more Cricut Experimenting
- First building of Toronto Carpet done
- Doing it the Old School Way
- Fencing Toronto Carpet
- Improved Closet Scenery
- Adding a pair of Hoists
- Repaving a Ripped out Crossing
- Hinde & Dauch Finally Built
- Starting the drawing process for two more buildings
- Sunday Cutting Cores
- Starting on building Canadian General Electric
- Details and Walls Up for Canadian General Electric
- Ripping a Gremlin Out
- Primer on the Patio
Locomotives & Rolling Stock
- The start of a small project – a Nuisance load
- Weathering a Flat Car
- One load of Tractors
- A Saturday Afternoon Boxcar Build
- A CPR U3e 0-6-0 Switcher – A Project for Liberty Village
- Something Shiny for Liberty Village
- A Canadian Pacific Railway S-2 for Liberty Village
- Wiping out Safety Stripes
- Taking Project Inspiration from a Friend
- Digital Command Control for an Atlas S-2
- Alco S-2 DCC Quick Update
- CPR 7020 Nearing Completion
- Alco Family Photos
- How Much Rolling Stock for a small Layout?
- Painting a fleet full of wheelsets
- Building a Fleet of Freight Car Kits
- Painting a Flatcar
- A gondola box and Finishing a Flatcar
- The Hazards of Second Hand Kits
- An Auxiliary Train for Liberty Village
- Another Brass Locomotive arrives in Liberty Village
- Sometimes its a simple thing
- Upgrading a Fleets worth of Couplers
- A staging yard of half built freight car kits
- The Importance of Light in Painting Models
- Thing’s that go “POP” on the Workbench…
- Blowing up a decoder doesn’t stop a project moving forward
- Just plugging away on Projects
- February Boxcars
- February Boxcar Builds become March Paintshop Projects
- Building Etched Boxcar Ladders
- Decalling an S-2 to give it an identity
- Tuesday Night Paintshop Whoopise, the camera be harsh on your mistakes
- One Down, Six (and probably more) to Go
- Brass Steam projects staring me in the face
- Making a go at Weathering
- You have to turn on the Powerpack…
- A bit of Before and After on freight cars
- Weathered and Unweathered
- Getting Better at Making Etched Ladders
- Many Shades of Boxcar Red
- Painting A Four Pack of Freight Cars
- Another Tichy Boom Car, but with a National Scale Car Mini Kit addition
- A FrankenBoxcar Kit Build
- A quick fix for a Project Mistake
- Fixing a paintshop whoopsie
- A Seven Pack of Boxcars ready for Decals
- Seven Boxcars now with Decals
- Breaking out the Strong Decal Setter
- A quick Hopper Project
Operations & Maintenance
- A Friday night test train
- Thinking about Operations and a new Tool
- A Tentative First night of Ops in Liberty Village
- I ran a train and I liked it…
- Layout Maintenance, a never-ending task
- Oh Come on….cat hair everywhere
- Hunting Electrical Gremlins
- A couple of Gremlins Down
- Paging the 1950’s Photographically…and planning an Ops Session
- Scenery Repairs and Final Preparations for the First Operating Session
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 
IMPRESSIVE–HOW’S IT PROGRESSING?