Yeah, i know. 12 feet in N scale is like 24 feet in HO just for a comparison. I don't think that he was thinking with his head on tight, because this is going to take so long to complete. I admire his modivation, though. I don't think that they used bikes or anything because this was from 1919-1965. Remember, they were alot more active back then, and they could always grab on to the train as it went by them (it wasn't going very fast?). I don't know how long it will take him, but I'm hoping he dosen't live his whole life down there.
Peace
Hi from Belgium,
I didn't remember in which magazines I see photos of a handsome ore dock. But I remember that a lot of the legs where made with Bachmann inexpensive signals bridges and the rest with plastruc or evergreen profiles.
Marc
12 feet long? Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaa. The local club had an ore dock scene in their old layout and it was only like 3 feet long. Just long enough for a single 700 odd foot long great lakes ore boat to dock. And this was in HO. Jeez I hope the real thing didn't make their poor employees have to walk that entire dock. It would take them like 10 mintues just to walk to their working spot! Well ok maybe not 10 minutes but would still take a while. I know the Beoing factory in Seattle let employee's ride pedal bikes to get to their spots the place was so huge. I need to get that book from my parents storage, but something like their main assembly building was large enough to hold half a dozen 747's parked side-by-side. One idea I had to model is the company I work at now, which had rail tracks with in the last year or two when they must have started additions, and model as still rail served. Just the building I work in would be aboue 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 feet if fully modeled. And that's just one building. They have another building that's probably 25% longer and the additions they just did adds up to about the size of the portion I work in, and plus they added a sepperate (but connected) office building.
Sorta just realized just HOW big some prototype things would get if completely modeled.
Well I know someone locally here did a Missabe Road ore dock in N that was about 5-6' long and was a major undertaking, so doing one twice that long is...well, kinda goofy!! But hey, I love ore trains and the whole bit, I'd love to see it work out.
IIRC the Soo dock was a concrete one?? If so, at least he wouldn't need to do all the delicate bracing you would on a steel dock (like the Walthers HO kit is modelled after).
He might want to look into casting his own parts, like the ore chutes (wow he'll need hundreds of them!)
You can get large sheets of styrene at plastic supply places, or you can order them directly from U.S. Plastics (www.usplastic.com) at much lower prices than small hobby-shop styrene sheets.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Well all he has to do is sign up like the rest of us no charge honest.....lol seriously I would look into using foamcore board. It's strong light and cheap and pretty easy to work with. He can build his basic structure out of foam core or gator board but the details would need to be done in stryene. I would check out Plastruct for something as complicated as an ore dock. I built the Walthers Ore Dock as a diorama and it was 8' long so unless your neighbor has a club sized layout even in N scale it's going to take up a lot of room and if you try and trunkate it it ain't gonna look right.
One of my close neighbors (also an avid model railroader) is modeling the Soo line ore dock in Ashland. He's trying to fit the whole scale model in there (12 1/4 feet long in N scale!!) into his layout. Since this is so long, he's trying to get some cheep materials, and cut some corners if he can. If anyone has some info or any idea what materials to get, PLEASE give it to me so i can relay it to him (he dosen't have an account here).