The new Mill Valley Lines model railroad is a layout of many "firsts" for me. Here's a brief introduction to the project and some of what you can expect to see in the coming months.

The layout is a proto-freelanced representation of the "modern day" Wisconsin & Southern Railroad and Union Pacific operations in the Janesville, Wisconsin area. The primary focus is on industrial switching and local freight operations, with interchanges to the Union Pacific and CPKC, as exists in Janesville today. While all of the industries are prototypical, some have been relocated or modified to fit the space and operational needs of the layout. There are also a few fictional industries that have been added to enhance operations and provide more variety. In the near future, I will publish a list of the industries and a high-level overview of the layout's operations plans.

As mentioned in the opening, this layout is a layout of "many firsts" for me. These include:

• My first multi-deck layout. I wanted to be able to have a long enough mainline run and open space between towns, without making the room feel cramped.
• My first layout that focuses more on prototype operations. I've become much more interested in how my prototype railroads operate and want to reproduce that as much as practicable.
• Switching to a new control system: I am moving from Digitrax to TCS for the main command station. This primarily to future-proof myself and be able to leverage LCC (see more on this below).
• Signaling and block detection. I've never done signaling or block detection before and plan to do that. The WSOR uses mostly ABS, but I may also do some CTC.

I'm sure I'm missing some other items, but these are the big ones. My goal is to document the process along the way (though, I'm already behind on that). These are some of the near-term posts I plan on writing to catch up:

• Track planning and design
• Benchwork construction
• Electronic/control design

In the mean time, take a look at the about page to see the track plan and more details about the layout.