Rarely do model railroaders refine a layout concept from one layout to another. Almost everyone who demolishes their layout does so to build something entirely different. Some even go so far as selling off all their old equipment, changing railroads/years modeled/geographical location.
ALTA Mk.1 was half set in Oakland, California, and half near Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico. The desert curve being near the later. This was the only "mostly finished" area on the layout and known as "The Photo Curve" and features prominently in a series of YT Shorts I did between 2019-2022.
The original layout, along with the entire layout room and workshop space it lived in, was cleaned, demolished and rebuilt from the ground up last summer. During that spring we designed a much more refined trackplan to support the new layout concept.
The new ALTA Mk 2 is now entirely set on the Mexican half of the railroad, centered around Guaymas & Empalme in Sonora's beautiful west coast. Much more accurate and cohesive, this new layout is built from day 1 for photography. Every scene has multiple sightlines to frame the equipment as it rolls through the scenery. It's much much more clear as a layout concept, capturing the late 1960's steam-to-diesel transition in Mexico, a decade after the last fires dropped in the US.
Here's the first of an ongoing series chronicling the building of the HO scale ALTA Railway mkII, (I'm editing episode 6 right now) This should provide all the best bits of context for the project as a whole.
