I've been re-working the layout design in my head over the past month. I sat down this week-end and put it down on paper using the XTrackCAD software. For the most part, the software works well enough, but there are some tasks that are buggy on my Mac. For example, it won't export to a bitmap correctly. It turns out that this feature works perfectly fine on a PC and I managed to get an acceptable picture to post.
I drew in the table sections to get a feel for the modules that I still need to construct. I also sketched in the structures as well. You can see the canal section between the residential buildings and the station. This is the part that had kept me frustrated for over a year. Most of the frustration was focused on how to make the table structurally strong due to the big gaping hole in the middle of the module. The table will be weak in the middle and have a tendency to twist and warp if I don't design it correctly. This still worries me. I may have to abandon this if I can't work out how to make it rigid.
The other concern is the conversion to DCC from analog now that I've changed the layout to a teardrop. I'm going to have to re-visit Alan Gartner's blog again on how to do the conversion on the Kato unitrack turnouts. Anyways, here's the output of XTrackCAD...
