Bayrails 2025 Layouts

The R&D Railroad models the Southern Pacific Coast Division in 1954. The modeled portion includes the main classification yard at Watsonville Junction, and switching at the towns of Castroville and Gilroy, and the sidings of Sargent and Elkhorn. In addition, the Monterey branch, an abbreviated second deck connecting to the main line at Castroville, has switching jobs at Fort Ord, Monterey/Cannery Row, and Pacific Grove. It is a single deck, twice around design in a 12' x 30' room, and supports a crew of 7. Trains to and from Salinas and San Jose are sourced and sunk via a double ended staging yard. A key feature is that the layout requires little or no re-staging between sessions. As for trains, there are four Watsonville based local turns, east and west through freights, passenger trains, a surprisingly-fun-to-run sand train, and a reefer local. As envisioned by the owner, the R&D was built as a laboratory to learn about operations and layout design. To bring the layout to its present form, many ideas from post op-session discussions have been incorporated into the layout as experiments. The good ideas were refined, and the bad ideas were abandoned. As such, it has undergone many changes over the past three years and more than 65 op-sessions. These changes have been mostly in track arrangements, operating system, and rules. The R&D has now reached "maturity", in so much as the lessons learned from the R&D 2.0 are being applied to the design and construction of a new layout and an outbuilding to house it.

The layout is NCE DCC controlled with wireless throttles, and hand thrown turnouts. While scenery has not been a focus of the R&D experiments, 35% of the layout is sceniced. Dispatching is done using Track Warrants via FRS radios. Concise documentation of all train operations is provided to assist operators in stepping into a new job.

This layout is offered as bonus session on Wednesday, March 13, at 2:00 PM. It is a little over an hour from the hotel so you can make it if you arrive at the hotel by 12:30 and is ideal if you are driving in from Southern California.