Once Darestof had been rebuilt, it was put away to enable the construction of the next town south, namely Curlew. This was started with a lot of discussion about what should go there, what would fit, etc., etc.
To start the discussions, I used an extra wide-angle lens on my iPhone to get a “bird’s eye view” of the area, with a few pieces of cardboard to set the stage.
After that, we rolled out big sheets of white paper and taped it to the cardboard, and Gordie got to work doodling away!
When the main line was build past the town of Carson, only a switch from the main track was installed. Carson is located southwest of Grand Forks and is right on the US border. In reality it had no rail served industries, but we are not going to let a little historical fact like that stop us! Gordie came over one evening and we brainstormed and doodled with the idea of getting as much switching activity as possible in a very small space. We also had to include the border, with some form of customs house. He had a brilliant suggestion that with a spur for the customs house, cars could be randomly selected for inspection moving in either direction, so this became another of those “universal industries” that can accept any type of car.
I had realized that to have enough tracks to be worthwhile, the land first had to be extended just a little, so out came the plywood and clamps…
Then Gordie went to work and played around with bits of track until he had a very workable arrangement. I captured it for posterity (and so I could remember it!) using a panorama feature on my iPhone.
