(EDIT: Originally "Versatile small layout and track design." Since this thread has ballooned beyond what I initially asked and become a space for all things related to my MRRing endeavors, I changed the thread topic to something broader.)
Hi everyone,
I've recently decided to get back into model railroading after some years away from the hobby-- when I was eight years old, I had a layout my parents built for me, then as a young teen I built one myself-- both HO scale 4x8s, both pretty terrible in terms of operation possibilities but with a continuous run oval (two, in the case of the one I built myself.) As a result I have quite a bit of HO rolling stock to play with, plus a liking for continuous running but also a wish for something more operationally interesting.
I decided to spend the past three months researching (a significant amount of that on this forum-- I'm overwhelmed by the amount of information and resources here) and reflecting on what I really wanted out of the hobby. I like to sit back and watch trains run, but I like operations too and am thinking it might be fun to work with waybills and direct trains both through and local. I like to work with my hands and build/design/create stuff, so I've decided this time around to try to scratchbuild some structures, kitbash and detail some of my older, blander Athearn/IHC rolling stock, and build my own turnouts/handlay some of the track (using code 83 flex for the rest.) This gives me lots of individual projects-- time is not really an issue, as I like to take my time putting together these things.
The main problem, however, is space-- specifically, a variable space. I will be moving around a lot in the next few years (my wife and I are both grad students), so I have been spending a lot of my time figuring out how to make a portable layout that could fit into a general space without overwhelming the room, and that, should it be impossible to fit the entire layout into a given space, I can set up a section of it in a corner. It should also be easy to get through any door or corridor, etc., and lightweight so that one or two people can easily move each section.
So here's the plan: I've chosen to build a donut-style layout in a few rectangular sections (72"x18"), with one section shortened by two feet to allow for walk-in access. The total floor space for this design is thus 6'x9'. I plan to build a lift-out bridge that can span this walkway to allow for continuous running. Here's a photo of the design, snapped from my sketchbook (apologies if it's difficult to read or make out details):
To help explain what's in there, I'm planning to model DRGW and San Luis Central's San Luis Valley standard-gauge lines ca.1948-1955, with a fictional junction town proto-lanced from either the Creede or Walsenberg/La Veta branches off of Alamosa-- thus, interchange occurs with the SLC in the bottom right corner, the main continues towards Alamosa on the bottom left, and general freight traffic flows from the former to the latter. (There may be through coal/scoria trains from further up the DRGW branch as well.) Since I won't be running very long trains-- 3 passenger cars or 5-6 freight cars max-- staging is planned as several removable cassettes that can be added to either track running off the board, including a three-track yard. Curves are generous for the passenger cars (26"R minimum on the bottom right, the rest of the mainline 28"-30"R.)
Southern Colorado is a pretty spacious place and the fictional town is not a large one, so I've tried not to clutter the design with track or buildings and kept plenty of space for scenery (including a river on the left end and a shallow ravine along the lower right.) Four small 'industries' are placed around the town: from the top clockwise, the town freighthouse and passenger station on the top section, a potato storehouse at the top of the right section, and a scrap yard on the bottom section. The tracks between the freighthouse and station are a small engine maintenance spur, with water/sand towers and a maintenance shed, plus a storage spur that can be cleared to allow in a sand gondola and a water tanker to refill. There's also a small coach spur above the main at the station for dropping a baggage car or to sideline any 1-car SLC passenger trains in favor of the DRGW through ones. All spurs will hold at least 4 cars as far as I can gauge at this point. The runaround as planned will hold 4 cars plus an engine and caboose, but I'll make it as long as I can while still leaving an engine length of lead at the top left before the section break.
Ideally, I would like to only have one track spanning each section for the sake of simplicity in aligning the sections. By building it this way, I'm thinking that depending on available space I can set up the top and right sections for minimum point-style switching in/out from the interchange (hence the engine-length lead before the runaround), add the bottom section for an extra industry, add the left section for interchange-to-interchange operations and finally the lift-out bridge for continuous running.
My plan thus far for the benchwork is to make an open-grid style frame out of 1x4s, add a sheet of 1/4" ply on top, and 1.5" of Lowe's green extruded foam-- trying to strike a balance between lightweight and something that will lessen, but not deaden, the sound of the trains (the layout I built as a teen was just foam on a frame and MAN was that sucker loud...) I might look around for some used foldable banquet table legs that can nest up inside the benchwork, so the sections can be stored in some kind of rack or against the wall.
Apologies for such a long first post-- I guess I'm looking for comments about the feasibility of such a design, any potential flaws in the track plan that I might not have caught or that could be made better for what I am trying to do, and general advice before diving into construction. Thanks, all.
P
There doesn't seem to be too much to add. I'd say it looks like you've been doing some sensible creative thinking and paying attention to some voices of experience. What you've drawn is a modified and expanded version of the old Tidewater Central layout that was featured in MR around 1955-56. I'm not so sure about the length of your passing siding. It seems a bit short, but probably workable. Your curves should work out OK for shortline/branchline operation, although there are some passenger cars that might have trouble with 26" radius. For the 1948 time period, I'm guessing you'll be using steam locos, probably 2-8-0's. They should be fairly comfortable on a layout like this, and it looks like you've done about as much as you can do in terms of portability and adaptability for other locations.
Good luck!
Tom
Thanks Tom! Amazing how similar the two are-- I was not familiar with that design. I laid out the passing siding with some templates the other day and it is a bit short-- both tracks will hold 3 passenger cars and loco, but that only works out to 4 freight cars plus loco and caboose. I'll have to play around with it some more. There may only be room for one engine service track, as well, if I'm to fit the water and sand towers into that area.
Yes, I'll be using mostly steamers-- a 4-6-2 for passenger traffic, and planning to kitbash two 2-8-0s from my current stock. I have a pair of IHC 2-8-2s and a Mantua 'Sierra #3' long-bodied 4-6-0 that seem promising for that task. I also have a little Bachmann GE 70-tonner to use for switching and interchange traffic.
So I've decided to turn this into a build thread, and will update things as I go along. In the past month I've started on the benchwork, but am having some problems with stability (figures, since it won't be bolted to a wall.) The sections are designed so that the legs fold in (48" 1x2s attached with folding brackets to the underside of the table.) I will probably shorten these to 44" since I have a four-foot section that needs to reach the same height. Sorry for the fuzziness in these pics:
Frame is 1x4s with 1x3 crossbeams, 1/4" ply on top. The section I have in the pics is 72"x18". When two sections are bolted together into an L, it's much more stable but still not wobble-free, and standing alone, like this one, it wobbles all over the place. I realize the 1x2s are quite flimsy by themselves, but I'm trying to fit this into a compact space while also keeping weight down. The problem is that since the legs are supposed to fold up into the layout's undercarriage, a permanent brace across the section's length won't be possible, so I'm now thinking about some kind of removable bracing that I can slip onto the lower cross-pieces.
I did not read all of your words about operation. Having jumped to the plan itself, I think it is a good fit for the space and you should be able to fit all of the turnouts where they are shown. That can sometimes be a problem with hand drawn plans.
- Douglas
Two tables worth of benchwork now completed:
The cross braces are removable and currently held in place by gravity. It's quite stable, although for extra security I may find a way to lock them in place. I also put 2 layers of 1" foam on top, attached with caulk.
Some close-ups. Notice that the second table only has three legs-- I did that to cut down on weight. Only the center table will have four legs-- I can then build outward from there when setting the layout up. The 'Y' shaped brace gives the table enough stability so I can set it up without falling while attaching sections, or if I want to work on it seperately later on. The two sections are attached with 1/4" carriage bolts and wingnuts.
This pic shows a good view of the construction difference.
All sections are up and I've begun setting out the track plan.
One end-of-summer project, while I was acquiring the materials for the benchwork, was learning how to build turnouts from scratch. I can't say I'm particularly talented at making them look good, but so far they all seem to work well and easily let single trucks, freight cars and passenger cars roll freely through. We'll see what happens once everything is wired up and once I start running full trains through them. This is a #10 curved turnout-- most of the other ones I made were closer to #5-to-#7-range.
Once the track plan was transferred onto the foam surface with a Sharpie, I began laying out roadbed. I'm using N-scale roadbed for a lower profile.
Closer photo of the double turnout leading to both the passing siding and the coach spur for the station. Again, not very pretty (especially unpainted) but it gets the job done for now.
Mainline is caulked down!
(Terrible flash photo, sorry...!) I asked in another thread about soldering the flex curves and curved turnouts together and decided to solder the whole line, with a few small gaps strategically left for insurance. The freighthouse and maintenance spurs are fixed in place, too (that leaves the coach spur, interchanges and industry tracks, but those should be easy to add in later):
Where the sections meet, I affixed small scrap pieces of wood cut to the same height as the foam plus roadbed. I put two small brass screws into these, then soldered a PCB tie to them, and the rails to the PCB tie. I've taken the sections apart and put them back together a couple of times now, and so far it seems to do its job keeping the track aligned.
A while ago, while building the turnouts, I bought some Northeastern Scale Lumber Co. turnout ties thinking they might be useful. It turns out they were the wrong thickness for the PCB ties I was using, so I ended up making some out of balsa. These turnout ties, though, were the perfect size for my lift-out bridge: I bought a piece of steel angle, sprayed it with black paint so the metal would recede into the background, and glued some scrap wood to it to make a base/angled connector to the sections it spans. Then I laid the turnout ties over it and secured the rails with Pliobond.
I plan to use some neodymium magnets to hold it in place and for easy removal. The bridge structure itself will be built up above as well as underneath the track, helping to further hide the steel angle. I have some form of arch bridge in mind, but that's a project for a later date.
Wiring the sections will be next, I think-- I am picking up an old MRC Tech II 2500 power pack left over from my childhood next month, so until I get that connected I've been testing continuity with my 70-ton switcher and a 9-volt battery. So far all the handlaid turnouts look good electrically-- that was a big 'if' I worried about while making them.
Incidentally, I don't know if anyone is actually reading this or at all interested, but I'm just putting stuff up-- anything related as I make my way through this project. Because I'm a beginner, I'm sure I'm making mistakes here and there (and possibly everywhere...)
I wanted to put up my first airbrushing experiment: my Bachmann GE 70-ton switcher, which I got off Ebay for about $30, made a great first detailing project because it's a relatively small and simple engine. I wanted to use this shell:
to match the prototype, SLC #71:
So I masked the shell's stripes and windows and went to work. In retrospect, it probably would have been better if I had painted the whole front end the stripe color and then masked those and went over it with the body color... live and learn.
Simple small detailing-- I moved the horn to the cab roof and added the red lamp. Here's the loco as it stands now:
The stripes are not as clean as I would like, there's touch-up needed there as well as around the cab windows, and you can see the decal films-- I still need to spray it with a clear coat. The colors aren't an exact match, either. But I've still had a lot of fun trying to make this model somewhat resemble the real thing.
I don't know about anybody else, but I'm reading and enjoying your progress. Most beginners don't have the focus you have. They tend to try to have a model railroad that does too much. You have chosen a small prototype railroad with a manageable roster. Your scope is a bit limited, which means your expectations are reasonable. But it looks like you are doing very well without a lot of unnecessary input from us. You'll make mistakes. The technical term for that is "learning".
I know of the SLC, but that's about all. In his classic book MIXED TRAIN DAILY, Lucius Beebe tells of the SLC engineer who lovingly dolled up that 2-8-0 with silver trim. I hope to learn more about the road through your posts. Keep'em coming.
I too am reading & following your progress and am very impressed with that #10 curved turnout. I have some questions about it.
What jigs did you use to build it?
Do you plan on handbuilding all your turnouts?
how do you make your frogs?
Keep up the good work. It seems if you can handbuild trackwork you will have few problems with building your layout.
Bob D As long as you surface as many times as you dive you`ll be alive to read these posts.
Thanks for the kind words, both of you.
subman What jigs did you use to build it? Do you plan on handbuilding all your turnouts? how do you make your frogs?
All of the ones I've got are handbuilt-- I may make a few more for cassettes, but all the ones I need for the layout at this point are finished. Besides the #10 curved, there are a handful of regular #5s and then a few that were constructed together: a pair of #8s facing point-to-point, a pair of #6s in series, and a #6 curved and a #7 straight in series. I designed each of those for a particular space in the trackwork to keep it flowing.
I made my own tie jigs using templates off of Fast Tracks's site and a few short strips of balsa to hold the PCB ties. The frogs I made mostly by eye, with a flat file, by making a sharp kink in the rail and then filing at it until I'd almost gone through it. Then I bent it back over, soldered the two pieces together, and filed the frog point until it was sharp.
In the last (busy) two months, most of the work I did involved wiring track and checking connections. I'm still going on that, so there's been little visual progress. I did, however, return home with a couple boxes of rolling stock, wire, and buildings left over from my childhood layouts.
About 95% of the cars are old Mantua/Tyco collected on the cheap, which is great for me because it gives me plenty of fodder for learning how to kitbash, build scratch details, and weather. Also, it's a trip looking at some of my hilarious attempts to freehand paint lines, details, lettering... I didn't care about how they looked, I was just being artistic and not trying to match anything in real life.
Anyway, here are a couple of short passenger car bodies I'm modifying. The first is a Mantua combine-- decorated in slime green (why did I think that was a good idea??) with sloppy painted lettering. I moved the baggage doors forward to the leading edge of the car, and used styrene to modify the windows and siding of the door.
The other one is a Life-Like domed car I'm changing to look more like the ex-observation cars DRGW modified so they could be used mid-train. So far, I've just slapped the rounded end of a Mantua onto the end of the Life-Like car (I ran out of putty and haven't sanded the corrugation, so it's VERY rough-looking right now) and plan to re-attach the door thinned from the cut-off end. More spectacular pre-teen paint work!:
Besides getting these Frankencars underway, I started work on my third locomotive, the Class I runner interacting with the two smaller SLC locos. I took the chassis and drivers of my IHC 4-6-2, removed its open-frame motor and fitted a flywheel can motor and the body from an IHC 2-8-2-- just about the easiest bash imaginable since they both have the EXACT same body:
It's an excellent runner, although I've noticed that my old Tech II 2500 makes all three engines buzz rather loudly at low speeds. The other power pack that came home with me, an ancient crappy Bachmann one, doesn't cause any noise at all, though speed control is horrible-- so I may go Ebay hunting at some point for another DC pack to use as my main one.
Though the turnouts are neither wired nor throwable, though the power pack is attached with alligator clips, though there are no cassettes yet for switching out rolling stock, though there is really little there except track and wire... I have trains running for the first time in nearly fourteen years!
I set up three of my four sections, used the scrap yard area for a bit of interchange staging, and shuttled some cars around with my little PFM 2-8-0 for an hour, moving in empties to the freighthouse and storehouse spurs.
Next step is to put ground throws on the turnouts and wire up the ones with longer frogs so I don't have to nudge my switcher each time it rolls over one (which is really hard to do when you're holding a turnout or two open with your fingers!) More rolling stock upgrading and tinkering, too, of course.
P:
Interesting thread! Great progress too. You are not wasting any time.
Congratulations on hand building your turnouts.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
You're making a lot more progress than I am! Lookin' good!
Now that you have the 2-8-0, how do you like it?
I love it! I've never owned a brass locomotive before. I like working on it and trying to fine-tune the mechanism. I remotored this one with a Mabuchi FF-180PH can because the open frame was so loud. Now it's much quieter, though it's EXTREMELY sensitive to voltage-- a beautiful slow runner, but if I nudge the controller over 25 it starts to take off like a rocket! The new pack is an MRC Tech 4 220-- I needed something with far less aggressive pulse than the 2500. It does put out 18 volts to the track-- though neither the Bachmann switcher nor the 4-6-2 is nearly as sensitive to that.
Maybe I'll add a little more weight, too. The can motor is lighter, which may partly explain why it's stalling over the dead frogs-- only one of them is actually as long as the loco's wheelbase. I'm looking forward to detailing it and repainting/redecaling-- then it will truly be special.
When you add weight, be sure to add it to both the front and rear. The balance point should be at the main driver (where the main rod attaches), or just a bit forward of that point. Sometimes you can get some weight under the cab roof. If the point of balance is wrong, you could defeat the whole point of adding the weight in the first place.
Slow, but steady progress this month-- and a number of different projects active now. I've been replacing ties and put CI throws on all but two turnouts:
After consulting the track plan for Monte Vista again, I also changed the track a bit in the station/freighthouse area-- decided to remove a turnout and spur to space things out a bit more. I haven't decided on final placement for the siding sticking out in the middle (a bit disorienting-- my layout sections are stacked up against the wall right now):
Although I've finished wiring all four sections, I am thinking about nixing the control panel, running just two bus wires and having switches set in the fascia to control sidings and the runaround. I have a number of switches ready, but haven't decided if I want to go through the headache of rewiring, though it would be cleaner than what I've got, and more flexible if I wanted to add or remove a section later.
I also got some more airbrushing practice in earlier this month, priming and putting a coat of silver on a trio of Athearn 72' passenger cars on their way to DRGW livery:
If you've followed the WPF threads I've also been making headway on my P-44. A bunch of detail parts arrived by mail this week, so I've been busy detailing all over the place:
I scratchbuilt the smokestack details out of styrene and a bit of brass tubing; most of the other details are Cal Scale. The red magnet wire across the front is just holding the handrail taut in place while the CA cures; I'll cut it to size afterward.
Finally starting to look a little familiar?
Looking at what I own in terms of rolling stock, I'm starting to think about a different set of industries for this layout-- which is not so hard to do, considering I don't have any structures yet. The depot will stay, as will the potato storehouse, but I'm thinking of replacing the scrap yard with a grain elevator since it's a more interesting visual structure. This would allow me to modify a number of boxcars I already own to use as grain cars. The Colorado Seed Co. in Monte Vista might be a good candidate for this-- there's an excellent picture here:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=462462&nseq=0
I'm still thinking about the freighthouse area-- one spur is gone and I'm seriously considering removing another. Maybe the freighthouse can go along the passing siding, which would make it more central, and then some other industry-- like a liquid fertilizer tank-- could go where the freighthouse is currently located.
The Colorado Seed Company looks like an interesting structure, but I wonder if it's a bit too modern for your intended 1948-1955 time period. I'm not sure about that, but I'll bet somebody on the forum can explain. During those years, I think most grain was shipped in boxcars, rather than covered hoppers. Of course, no law says you can't be flexible in your choices and do things as you wish. It's your railroad.
Tom, I agree that as it stands the building looks too modern, but I think grain was being shipped out of the area in the 1950s-- there are photos of grain warehouses from that period, similar-looking to the potato storehouses. I do plan to use boxcars to ship grain, should've made that clearer. I've been looking around to see if a grain elevator existed in the area in the 1950s and what it might look like, but haven't found anything yet.
If you can't find photos & data on a real prototype structure from your area, you can always build one (scratch, kit, crosskit, etc.) that appeals to you. As we established recently in another thread, that's a surefire way to make the genuine data materialize. You'll find the data about a week after you complete the imagineered project.
P,
I've seen your progress on the loco, but until you changed the headline, I missed seeing this thread. Thought I'd offer a link that you might find useful to Roland Levin's website on modeling the Rio Grande in the SLV: http://hem.bredband.net/drgw/
Roland is a list acquaintance who hangs out on the Rio Grande Yahoo list, where you can also find others with an interest in the area.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Mike,
Thanks for linking-- I've explored Roland's site before and harvested lots of details. The 'Grande Gold' newsletters are chock-full of info from railfanning the area, including track plans, industry locations, and lots of pictures-- though it's all several decades after the era I'm modeling, it's still a treasure trove. Hadn't seen the Rio Grande Yahoo list, though-- maybe I'll join it.
Good to know you'd already found Roland's site, but I suppose there's still not a lot of sites about the San Luis Valley.
Here's the DRGW Yahoo list homepage link: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/DRGW/info
Although not officially covered in the list synopsis, there's been lots of discussions over the years about the various lines, past and present, in the SLV. There may be dedicated SLV lists out there, I just don't know about them.
PT:
Don't know how I've missed this thread, but I have enjoyed the read. Great concept, and great execution. Look forward to seeing more...
Thanks, TC.
I've been thinking about function for the tracks on the busiest section this week. I'm finding two issues:first, the middle spur eats up way too much space, leaving no room for buildings between the outer spur and the main. Second, the two-pronged outer spur is 4 car lengths on each end, but there's not even enough room for an aisle-side industry there, and the freighthouse doesn't need two tracks to itself-- it's not big enough to justify loading two boxcars, let alone two rows of boxcars...
Monte Vista has a long spur that moves away from the main line, with little tendrils branching off of it to serve a few industries. If I remove the middle spur and shorten the inside track for the remaining spur, I can approximate that (truncated, of course) and serve two industries instead of one. The freighthouse would then be placed on the passing siding. I think this is more in keeping with the 'feel' of the town and its layout. Here's a quick and dirty sketch: