So, you decided to follow my progress on the construction of the Elsworth Avenue El. This mythical line dates back to the Dual Contracts era and was intended to be a shuttle between the BMT/IND lines at Coney Island and another IRT line that was to be built but never saw the light of day. However, the residents of this Brooklyn neighborhood needed the transportation and through the work of Donald M. Ellsworth, a local politician, the el remained. To celebrate, they decided to rename South End Avenue over which the el ran in his honor. Unfortunately, they misspelled all the street signs and the name stuck.
Actually, I thought the layout that I design would contain a significant number of different el structures and stations as well as a station based on the Stillwell Avenue station in Coney Island. So, I would definitely be getting my "El's worth" of construction on this layout and the name stuck.
Check here from time to time as I chronicle my progress. Here you will find photographs of the equipment and experiments as I proceed to find a reasonable and cost effective method of raising the el. I have planned four phases. The first is the research phase. In this phase, I examine construction techniques and suppliers as well as build "prototypes" (not 1:1 scale variety but first piece test models). The second phase is building two modules. The first module is either a station or the terminal for the shuttle and the second is the Stillwell Avenue station. These modules will be used for experimenting with construction techniques. The third phase is the software development phase for the interlocking signals. Thanks to Bernard S. Greenberg, the creator of NXSYS, I've now gained a desire to create realistic interlocking signals for this layout and I'll be writing code and designing interfaces to run off an old PC (I will probably use a version of DOS-C that is enhanced for real-time operation as the underlying embedded operating system). The final stage involves building the scenery which is predominantly variations of New York City neighborhoods.
All this work won't happen overnight and it will be quite some time before I'm finished. However, I hope you will follow my progress if you're interested in creating your own rapid transit layout. Hopefully, I'll have blazed the trail for you and you can benefit from my experiences. With that, drop down to the table of contents and start reading!