I was cleaning part of my workbench today and ran across the camera car I hacked together back in 2016 to do my original “tour around the layout” video. I wouldn’t call it a great camera, but it’s relatively small and it produces okay video for its size. My other option was keep installing switch machines and track wiring in the Eyak smelter yard, so putting together an updated cab ride sounded like more fun.

Unlike the last one, which started at Kennecott, this one will start out on the (fictional) Nizina Branch and enter the main line at Nicolai Junction (again, fictional, and between McCarthy and Kennecott). The Nizina Branch is located above my workbench, and provides some staging room and a little more operational variety for ore trains from “other mines” up around Dan Creek.

From there, it’s an engineer’s view all the way to Cordova. Stay tuned at the very end for a couple bloopers. Turns out my camera car is far wider than the loading gauge for a typical N scale car and a bit top-heavy, so it doesn’t always behave itself now that some of the layout clearances have gotten a bit tighter.