"59th Street Branch" layout plan has always reminded me of an Interstate Highway System with high speed continuous running with on and off ramps. It would perhaps be able to add some RDC-commuter running as well.
Frank Ellison's "Delta Lines" also had that same sense of busy mainline running urgency except "Delta Lines" operations were much smoother and extensive.
In either case, when glancing at the trackplans, you can easily follow operations.
Two other what ifs...
[1] Since this is really a "one level layout" you could adjust the trackplan to be an upper level of a multi-deck layout with a helix under this trackplan going to a lower level -- which could be a run into a countryside setting, or even a combination of say coal mine & steel mill operations.
[2] Another interesting viewpoint is that in theory, the 9'x11' HO Scale layout times a 55% conversion comes out at a 5'x6' layout for N Scale. What if the original 9'x11' dimensions were retained for N Scale running?
"59th Street Branch" makes you think, as evidenced by this thread, and perhaps this is one of its greatest attributes.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
I called MR today and the Layout plan and article for Muddlety Creek is on it's way. Will know more in 5 to 7 days.
C & O Steam Doughless, Thanks for the ideas. I I agree that both would be workable. I am in the process of getting my benchwork completed and will be able to layout something in the near future, I hope. What was the article you were refering to in the 4/07 issue? I didn't see anything on the Glass Rock & Eastern.
Doughless,
Thanks for the ideas. I I agree that both would be workable. I am in the process of getting my benchwork completed and will be able to layout something in the near future, I hope.
What was the article you were refering to in the 4/07 issue? I didn't see anything on the Glass Rock & Eastern.
It was called the Ohio Southern in a Bedroom, page 76 I think. I don't know if the article supports your theme, but I found it interesting, although too short. The track plan was designed to model that particular short line, so it pays hommage to the heart of the line, the Y at Fultonham Yard. To me, the Y is the source of some reach problems.
The basic schematic of the plan would seem to suit your theme. A central yard with three spokes originating from it. Starting with the yard remaining on the right side of the plan, the main continues from the "south" side of the yard to your coal mine branch along your bottom wall. From the the other side of the yard, the main leads to an interchange or staging tacks along the left side, and the third spoke leads from the yard on the right side to another mine or logging mill modeled above the mainline along the top wall. Without the Y, that branch would have to meet the yard using just a switch and the loco would have to do a runaround move to pull the train to the left towards the interchange. But that's okay for something like a seldom used logging branch.
Without the Y' and the loops, that schematic could be laid out along your walls using 24 inch deep benchwork. If you connect the branch that's now along your bottom wall with staging on the left behind a backdrop, you could have continous running and incorporate some of the heavy coal drags offered by the Cumberland Gap discussed earlier.
In the end, the final plan wouldn't look anything like the Glass Rock in the flesh, but that plan could still be the basic inspiration for your final arrangement.
Sounds good to me, but you or others may see something I don't.
Sorry if my explanation is confusing.
Doug
- Douglas
More on paired industries ...
Well, now I must reveal that certain "industries" can be paired reasonably on many layouts. but these relate primarily to car servicing. Examples:
A refrigerator car is iced at an ice-loading facility, then the car is moved to a produce loading point, and then perhaps even sent back for topping off the ice before the car is sent to its recipient. (Pity the modelers of contemporary times who have mechanically refrigerated cars. Perhaps they can find space for a refrigerator car servicing/repair/cleanout facility.)
A car is picked up at an industry and found to be defective. So, the car is taken to a repair facility to be fixed, and then the car proceeds on its way.
A car is taken to a cleaning facility, and then sent to the industry for loading.
Steel mills, paper mills, and such are known to have inter-plant shipping, moving ingredients and products among their various subparts.
Anyway, if you have a classification yard on the layout, that can be a good place to have car repair and cleaning tracks for lots more car-routing opportunties and can satisfy the need to directly observe a car moving visibly from one industry to another on the layout. These, particularly car repair, are great universal "industries." They closely rank with team tracks and interchanges.
Mark
Kalmbach customer service will sell photocopies of articles from out-of-print magazines, just phone them. The author is W. Allen McClelland.
As Stein said, MRP issues turn up fairly often on eBay, although I din't see a current offering of MRP 1996.
Back issues of many model railroad and other rail publications can also be purchased from Railpub. (No connection except as a satisfied customer). Although they appear to be currently out of stock on MRP 1996, they seem to get restocked on issues fairly often. An email to them will let them know you are looking for that issue.
Muddlety Creek is for a slightly larger space, so it would need a little adaptation. But I think it illustrates an alternative approach that would better fit your interests than some of the layouts you have been considering. Best of luck!
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
Stein,
Thanks for the explination. That gives me a complete new perspective on how to operate eveything.
C & O SteamDo you know if the book Model Railroad Planning 1996 is still available.
Doesn't look like it is available from the publisher any more:
http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/model-railroading-model-railroad-planning.html
You could check ebay.
Smile,Stein
C & O Steam Mark, Maybe I am looking at things all wrong. I thought the idea of paried industries was to generate revenue for the railroad. If I am running a couple shifts at my coal tipple I will need to sell the coal to someone and maybe a power plant would be a good outlet. Am I missing something.
Mark,
Maybe I am looking at things all wrong. I thought the idea of paried industries was to generate revenue for the railroad. If I am running a couple shifts at my coal tipple I will need to sell the coal to someone and maybe a power plant would be a good outlet. Am I missing something.
There is a cost in loading, picking up, sorting, transporting, sorting, delivering and unloading railroad cars. If you are going to transport something two miles, it usually makes very little sense to load it in railroad cars.
Usually the recipient of a railroad car is hundreds (or thousands) of miles away from the shipper. Putting both shipper and receiver on the modelled part of the layout tends to not work very well. Unless the receiver is e.g. an intermediate location - like an exchange track, or a coal washing plant or some such thing.
The thing to do if you want you layout to look bigger is to deliver those loaded coal cars to a hidden track ("staging") which represents "the rest of the world". The coal can be loaded at the mine, and then shipped off your layout to a powerplant half way across the continent. Which is represented by running the train into staging.
Next time you run your layout, a train with empty coal cars come from staging (somewhere else) and is run to the mine to take on a load of coal for some customer - either the same customer, or some other customer in some other part of the country. And then run into staging again - now representing a totally different route through the national railroad net.
By making the destination (or source) not be a modelled location on your layout, your modelled world just grew a lot. Because that same staging track (or set of staging tracks) can now represent a lot of different businesses in different locations - both businesses that ship to a business on your layout, and businesses that receive something from shippers on your layout. The only limitation is your imagination.
If you instead model both shipper (a coal mine) and recipient (a power station) on your layout, you can pull loaded cars from the shipper, do three loops and deliver them to the recipient.
You are probably getting less operations per square foot than you would have if you instead of a shipper-recipient pair had added some staging tracks to represent the rest of the world, and just modelled the shipper or just modelled the recipient of the pair.
If you run mine to staging, your mine can now easily ship coal to:
- a power plant - a steel mill - a harbor (for export by ship) - a local coal dealer in some town - or some other industry you can think of
This makes it possible for you to run several trains of outbound coal loads, or to sort outbound coal cars into blocks of cars for different customers.
From staging, your coal mine can receive boxcars of dynamite and other supplies for the miners, flat cars with machinery and quite a few other things. Instead of having one shipper-recipient pair, you now can have a _lot_ of shipper-recipient pairs involving that coal mine (or power plant, if you instead decided to model the recipient end of the mine-power plant pair).
As Fred Wright says in his signature: my thoughts, your choice :-)
Smile, Stein
MC
Byron,
Thanks for all your input, I really appreciate the time you have taken to help me with my ideas. I printed off your questionnaire about a year ago. guess its time I go back and review my answers.
I would like to take a look at Allen McCelland's Muddlety Creek layout but couldn't find the book or the layout by doing a search on the MR database. Do you know if the book Model Railroad Planning 1996 is still available.
Again, thanks for your time and support.
C & O Steam Ok, maybe this one will work...Cunningham's Gap published in MR Dec 2003 issue. Also in 102 Realistic Track Plans #58.
Ok, maybe this one will work...Cunningham's Gap published in MR Dec 2003 issue. Also in 102 Realistic Track Plans #58.
This was actually in the March 2003 issue of MR (there are a few cut-and-paste typos in 102 Track Plans, this is one of them).
This layout was designed to replicate a particular single town on the Virginian. It's not a great choice for an "all-around" layout in HO, IMHO. A third of the shelf length is wasted by not using the area in front of staging.
If you want to replicate just one town and to run mostly coal trains, it's OK, I guess. But for me it would not offer engaging operations in the long run for that amount of space.
All that being said, it would be relatively simple to build, if that's an attraction. But the question is whether it would deliver long-term satisfaction for you.
ByronModel RR Blog
C & O Steam Hay, when did you take my picture.....................That pretty explains where I am on my layout ideas.. I have mostly "OR's" at this point. Double main line, and /or twice around, yard, coal tipple, power plant, city of Thurmond, Hinton yard, Sandstone station, Rainelle lumber yard, rivers, bridges, & staging. All of this in a 11' x 11' room. You can see why I am going crazy.
Hay, when did you take my picture.....................That pretty explains where I am on my layout ideas.. I have mostly "OR's" at this point.
Double main line, and /or twice around, yard, coal tipple, power plant, city of Thurmond, Hinton yard, Sandstone station, Rainelle lumber yard, rivers, bridges, & staging. All of this in a 11' x 11' room. You can see why I am going crazy.
I've been reading the thread and thought I would offer some thoughts, as feable as they are.
Keep in mind that the track plan you look at can have the scenery altered from its original drawing to fit your theme. You don't have to keep your review of track plans limited to track arrangements that are set in the exact theme that you want. That in mind:
For local branch or switching, I've always liked the concept of Jim Hediger's Glass Rock & Eastern, plan #28 in 102 Trackplans. The original article in 4/07 was interesting too. The plan is a bit crowded and has some access issues, but I think some of that is do to it accommodating a walk-in design. Your space is a foot longer, and willingness to have an around the walls design could allow you to unfold some of the loops that cause problems with this plan. The left side could be simplified and the right side branch could be unfolded along the lower wall, thereby allowing the yard to be lengthened as well.
For more continuous running, an expanded version of plan #33 could offer a double track mainline going around the walls, and more local traffic on an inner loop that replaces the electrified line that's there now. Your space would allow you to lengthen the sidings. Scenery and some spurs would have to be altered a bit, but the track arrangement seems to have good basic bones to it. If expanded to your space, it could also resemble a more doable and simpler version of the 59th street plan that headlines this thread.
It will probably be difficult to find a published plan that will fit your thinking perfectly.
One minor issue that really bugs me with the Cunningham's Gap plan is the placement of the depot two tracks away from the main track. The small-town depot should be immediately adjacent to the main track. Now, if it was a combination freight and passenger depot, one could justify a buried-with-just-the-rail-tops-showing house track (not a passing siding) between depot and main track.
Twice around would make the layout extremely cluttered with track. Double tracking would be bad enough and makes operations less interesting, but could be added with the addition of some more turnouts. Grades would have to be extremely short and you'd end up with some kind of roller coaster ride. Doesn't mean you couldn't have a couple of very minimal grades for scenic effect, but not enough to require a second locomotive to pull the train. If you like the look of a couple locomotives, you can do it anyway. It wouldn't look silly with the relatively short trains if you model the diesel era.
There is room for a power plant (on the left or bottom sides) but would you be satisfied with it being only 20 feet away by rail? Sort of weakens the purpose of staging tracks representing the rest of the North American rail system. IMHO, the concept of modeling paired industries is generally a bad idea unless one is modeling the horse-and-buggy days or has a very large layout. Paired industries are best left to industrial railroads moving material from source to mill before it goes to the final consumer.
The layout as planned looks like it could be built with little difficulty. Just don't build it all table-top. The left side has scenic opportunities and the creek needs to be below the railroad and highway bridges.
Would there be a way to add a power plant and possible have a double main line or maybe a twice around. What about an incline so I can add an additional engine for the grade.
I guess I miss read the post. I wasn't aware that it was a Rail Marine Port. And yes you are right it's not what I am interested in.
C & O Steam I noticed your comment on this plan below from a previous post. I would like to take a look at the plan but I just got back into the Hobby a couple years ago and do not have the October 1990 issue. I tried to search the data MR track plans but they only go back to 1998. Any idea where else I could find the plan? Russell Schoof's 10'X11' Free Haven Terminal design from the October 1990 Model Railroader and the Kalmbach book 48 Top Notch Track Plans (1993).
I noticed your comment on this plan below from a previous post. I would like to take a look at the plan but I just got back into the Hobby a couple years ago and do not have the October 1990 issue. I tried to search the data MR track plans but they only go back to 1998. Any idea where else I could find the plan?
Russell Schoof's 10'X11' Free Haven Terminal design from the October 1990 Model Railroader and the Kalmbach book 48 Top Notch Track Plans (1993).
I wrote about this layout in my blog and received written permission from Kalmbach to show the track plan in the blog, so you can see a low-resolution copy there. Otherwise, you can buy the 48 Top Notch Track Plans book with the layout reprinted as I mentioned, or get the book on inter-library loan. And as Stein noted, Kalmbach sells back issues or copies of articles from back issues.
As I noted in this thread, the reproduction in the book is in a different scale than is printed on the track plan, but easy to figure out.
But this rail-marine port concept for a layout could hardly be farther from your stated interests for a coal-hauling layout [e.g., Thurmond, WV; Hinton yard; coal tipples; etc.], so I'll admit to being puzzled.
C & O Steam Byron, I noticed your comment on this plan below from a previous post. I would like to take a look at the plan but I just got back into the Hobby a couple years ago and do not have the October 1990 issue. I tried to search the data MR track plans but they only go back to 1998. Any idea where else I could find the plan?
I'm not Byron, but here is a general answer:
http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/model-railroading-model-railroader-magazine-back-issues.html
Of course, it could very well be that you could find old issues in your local library, at a swap meet or some such thing for less money than the handful of dollars it costs to buy a back issue from Kalmbach, but buying a back issue (or a photo copy of a specific article) from the publisher is generally a pretty safe bet :-)
Yeah, I know the plan has its shortcomings, but it could be heavily modified to better suit the OP's desires. Perhaps removing/sizing down the yard to fit the supplying/consuming industry and a small town, while the area closest to the lift gate with the industries and staging yard will have the other main industry and another small town if desired. The space between the two areas could be scenery with a type of view block, while the staging can be relocated under the layout or in a seperate room. Frankly I forgot to mention changing the plan before.
By the way, the shortfalls of the Montreal Harbour layout were discussed here a while back:http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/128274.aspx
CPRail modeler Why not try something like the Montreal Harbour Ry. http://www.trains.com/mrr/default.aspx?c=a&id=2436 Double track mainline with plenty of space to fit some of your ideas. Featured in June 2008 MR.
Why not try something like the Montreal Harbour Ry.
http://www.trains.com/mrr/default.aspx?c=a&id=2436
Double track mainline with plenty of space to fit some of your ideas. Featured in June 2008 MR.
This layout also presents a number of concerns. Again, a very unrealistic over-use of switchback industry spurs. The number and length of the industry tracks is much too small relative to the yard and the overall layout, IMHO. That's especially true when you consider how short the spurs are effectively when you allow for clearances from adjacent tracks. Not counting the interchange, there might only be space to spot 10 or 12 cars total -- not much industry for a layout of this size depicting an urban area.
For example, one industry track that will probably only hold a single car (if that) requires a switchback move, a three-way turnout, and a crossing! Unrealistic, and tedious to operate. The fact that a plan is published is no warranty of suitability, sadly. And that's certainly true in this case, IMHO. Not to mention that it's at least as far from his expressed interests as is the 59th street plan.
The Original Poster needs to prioritize his desires and requirements (everything he wants probaly won't fit). Without that, it's very difficult for anyone to help. I provide this questionnaire to my clients to help them organize their thoughts about what they want from a layout. It doesn't make the decisions for them, but some have found that it helped them make trade-offs.
In terms of a coal hauling branch type layout in a spare-bedroom-sized space, Allen McClelland's Muddlety Creek layout in HO for a roughly 12X12 space is one of the best I've seen. It was published in Model Railroad Planning 1996. Staging track clearances are a little tight, but it's a very interesting use of the space.
MILW-RODR Now wait was this real or modeled???
Now wait was this real or modeled???
Natural lighting is the trick.
Now wait was this real or modeled??? I don't remember seeing the Montreal Harbour in that issue. I will have to go back and look.
Fred, it is on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
http://www.alberniheritage.com/mclean-mill/welcome-mclean-steam-sawmill
markpiercefwright I have had to do the same on my layout planning. My druthers included a fishing village, a lumber doghole port ,... a timber loading scene, a rail-served sawmill, .... Fred, you may need one of these.
fwright I have had to do the same on my layout planning. My druthers included a fishing village, a lumber doghole port ,... a timber loading scene, a rail-served sawmill, ....
I have had to do the same on my layout planning. My druthers included a fishing village, a lumber doghole port ,... a timber loading scene, a rail-served sawmill, ....
Fred, you may need one of these.
Where did you see this? Is it yours? "Is it for sale?" he asks while drooling.
Seriously, the roof is really amazing. I had planned a spar tree with an early wood-fired donkey to yard and load the logs.
Fred W