On November 11, 2021 I wrote about my prostate issue and the need to have 33 radiation treatments. Those treatments ended on December 20, 2021 so Christmas 2021 was extra special for me. Roughly 2/3 of the way through my treatments I became quite fatigued and had very little motivation to do much in the way of model railroading, or anything else for that matter.
In the second week of January my wife and I drove to West Kelowna, British Columbia, to spend a couple of months in the two-bedroom condominium that we purchased in autumn 2021. As I have been preoccupied with obtaining and assembling furniture and going on a lot of long walks to enjoy the scenery and the (relatively) mild winter weather I decided to take a break from the blog.
The fatigue from my radiation treatments resolved itself by the end of January and I feel great. We return home to Saskatchewan in mid-March at which time I must have a PSA test and then a consultation with the radiation oncologist. This will be the "moment of truth" as to whether the radiation treatments were successful.
Our condo in West Kelowna has two bedrooms plus a den. The den is just over 3.4 by 2.1 metres (11 by 7 feet) in size and has no window.
After being away from my model railroading hobby for some time I put my mind to how I could build a model railroad in the den, while at the same time not permanently occupying much of the room and rendering it useless for any other purpose. I concluded that a shelf-style switching layout would be fun to try. I have never before built a switching layout.
Following are my criteria for this switching layout:
- HO scale.
- must be able to be stored in a space-saving way when not in use, taking up minimal floor space.
- manually operated turnouts, hand-made using #5 Fast Tracks jigs.
- Digital Command Control (DCC) electronics.
- All buildings will be scratch-built.
- Layout dimensions will be approximately 3.4 by 0.7 metres (11 feet by 28 inches).
