I grew up a few hundred yards off the Green Bay and Western. The bright red trains always drew me in as they roared past our home. As I grew older and my interest in model railroads matured from roundy-rounds to more elaborate schemes, there was basically no deliberation in which railroad to model, only when.
I've chosen to model the late 60's to early 70's so I can have both paint schemes and a quite diverse set of Alco Diesels.
I've finally finalized my layout plans and started construction (posts with photos to follow in the next day or two).
That is an ambitious looking layout. I wish I had paid more attention to the Green Bay & Western (and its subsidiary the Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western, as well as the Ahnapee & Western that connected with it) in the 1960s.
I assume you belong to the GB&W Historical Society (they have some great maps) and have the Stan Mailer book on the railroad.
If I was to imagine a GB&W layout following your ideas, with Stevens Point at one end for staging, I think I would try to make the extreme other end Norwood Yard, and make the line to Kewaukee a branch from Norwood. Your Norwood Yard looks too small to me to be the source of enough cars for both your large Stevens Point staging and surprisingly large Kewaunee yard.
It might also be fun to add a couple of tracks at a Casco Jct and introduce loads and empties to and from Algoma and Sturgeon Bay on the Ahnapee & Western.
Dave Nelson
Nice! You have really captured the feel of Norwood yard. Very impressive design.
So, are you going to follow the GB&W prototype practice of tripling the yard?
CG
I'm not a member of the GBWHS, but I've considered joining. For references, I rely on The Green Bay Route website, plus Google Earth, Bing Maps, and various GIS sites for the individual counties along the route.
When I operate the layout alone, I'll start in the staging area with train 2, pick up a few more cars at Norwood and continue on to the car ferry yard. I'll empty & load a boat or 2 (or just take the return loop if the modules aren't set up) and then take train 1 back west.
With 1 or 2 other people operating with me, I'll have a one person take train 1/2, another take train 5/6 west to handle the local industries, and the last person work Norwood.
Norwood is a bit small, I had it bigger, but then it was nearly a 5 foot reach to the back corner. I shortened it a bit to make just a bit over 3 foot to the back of the round house, which is at least manageable. I'll see if I can change the angle a bit to get another foot or 2 out of the tracks. However, Norwood was always a cramped yard...
The staging yard is actually a shelf in a storage room in the basement. I just took over the entire shelf. I have quite a bit of random passenger equipment and engines from other roads which I needed to put somewhere, so I over built the staging. You can never have enough staging.
The Kewaunee modules were actually built nearly a dozen years ago when I was living in an apartment. I'll need to construct 2 more modules to connect them to the permanent benchwork. At the time I was trying to build them nearly to scale.
The modules will only be set up when I plan on operating them, most of the time, they'll be stashed under the stairs so the room can be used by rambunctious children (hence the sparseness of buildings on that side of the wall). Kewaunee Shipbuilding will most likely be a foamboard and hot glue mockup for a long while, and little to no landscaping until my son is a fair bit older for that reason.
I'm sure I'll need to at least double any trains to or from Norwood, but I don't plan on running many trains over 16 ft. The max I could run continuously is around 22 ft.
Why not just call it "Green Bay and Western?"
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
What a nice layout. I especially like that it's not crowded with trackage.
I look forward to seeing/reading more.
Ed
Nice seeing Stevens Point included in your plan. I have often thought about, if I didn't go in the direction I did and too late to turn back, that modeling the GB&W line from Plover to Point, maybe early 60s, also including Soo line activity along that scene would have been great. What an active layout that could make! From the junction at Plover with the GBW main north to Stevens Point, 3 paper mills, an asphalt plant, Joerns, Vetters, BakeRite Baking, I believe a lumber yard, coal yard, milling company, the freight house downtown, Copps food warehouse and a produce company, spurs to Lullaby furniture, and all the way up to the Pfiffner warehouse, there would be no end to building and operation enjoyment.
Alas, just about everything is gone now. The Canadian National serves one mill in Whiting and takes a train north out of Plover every day using the Green Bay tracks to the Whiting S curve and then to Point on the old P-Line and works the only other mill in Stevens Point. The trackage to the big Consolidated, later New Page mill, is gone as is the mill and the line to Point was taken up a couple years ago. All the trackage, GBW and Soo north of the remaining Verso mill, is long gone too. The GBW/Soo diamond at Wood Street was taken out years ago when the line was cut back to just service the asphalt. I believe that last time cars were received there was maybe around 2012.
So much to think about a layout that I will never build, but could be a great inspiration to the right modeler.
It took me a bit to find any photos of the Kewaunee Modules construction. Only one was actually in focus. I'll have to take some more photos of the current progress of the modules soon.
The track for the staging yard is mostly in place. A few sections of track right by the yard throat need to be caulked down yet, but I'm going to wait until the benchwork on the other side of the wall is done. I don't have many feeders soldered up yet. That's on the plate for this week, since I'm on vacation until January.
Layout PC, XP running JMRI, PR3 connect to a DCS50.
Engine Service Area. Programming Track is behind the unpainted Alcos.
Overview of most of the staging.
Bayfield Transfer Railway Why not just call it "Green Bay and Western?"
It's named different so when I'm talking about my model railway and the real GBW in the same conversation, there isn't any confusion.
7j43k What a nice layout. I especially like that it's not crowded with trackage. I look forward to seeing/reading more. Ed
Yes, that was one of my goals. I actually went too far in that direction and only had 3 industries in some of my first iterations. That would have been very pretty to look at, but quite boring to operate.
arbe1948 Alas, just about everything is gone now.
Alas, just about everything is gone now.
Yah, only about half the track on my layout isn't a state trail. Compared to most of the GBW trackage as a whole though, that's doing pretty good. In Green Bay, just the track north from Norwood is gone. The Seymour and Kewaunee track is all gone, (it stops just past Betten Processing in the west, and Luxemborg in the east).
Luxemburg, not Luxemborg.
I grew up there.
Here's a quick sketch of how I think the power districts will work.
The orange and blue districts will have auto reversers. Are there better places to gap the auto-reversing sections?
The green section won't have power unless the bridge in front of the door is in place. The purple section won't have power unless the kewaunee modules are in place. For these 2 districts, I plan on using 4-pole flat trailer wire plugs. The center 2 wires will be the main bus, the outer 2 wires will loop back from the center, and feed the tracks the green benchwork for the green district.
The black districts will be on individual toggle switches per track, so every engine doesn't turn on when the command station is switched on.
Nice design! It's interesting to compare it with the Kewaunee Division track plan from April 1978 MRR. I went to Black Creek Elementary from 5th through 8th grade (1982-1986) and recall the cars that were interchanged between the Soo and the GB&W. Usually there were between 5 and 10 cars on the NW interchange track, mostly box cars if I remember correctly. The SE interchange track was rebuilt in late 1986 for the trackage rights trains from the Soo/WC (Nos. 218/219 and 19/20).
We lived south of Black Creek about 5 miles, near the Soo Line, but I had a friend who lived next to the GB&W and we'd watch No. 1 and 2 go by his house.
Engineer Frank Fitzgerald would invite us up to the lead C424 on No. 1 while they were switching cars in Black Creek, prior to heading west. The Alcos would get that train moving pretty quickly. Those were fun times.
Do you plan to model/build a car ferry? The entire Kewaunee scene looks like a lot of fun to model.
My wife and I live pretty close to the Minnesota Commercial Railway so I still get to see some red former GB&W Alcos from time to time.
ROCK MILW Engineer Frank Fitzgerald would invite us up to the lead C424 on No. 1 while they were switching cars in Black Creek, prior to heading west. The Alcos would get that train moving pretty quickly. Those were fun times. Do you plan to model/build a car ferry? The entire Kewaunee scene looks like a lot of fun to model.
I was able to get a tour of a caboose once in 1993, just before the sale to WC. That was a very cool day for 10 year old me.
I do plan on modeling a car ferry or two, but its way down on the to-do list. I'm planning on mocking-up a basic car float of some sort for operations. I have also considered adding a matching dock on the staging yard to unload them.
Most of the benchwork is now done. There will be a 6" or so facia of masonite added once all the terraforming is completed.
This is where Seymour Co-op and Seymour Canning Company will be located.
Green Bay Soap Company and Betten Processing will be in this corner.
Norwood yard's future home.
C. Reiss Coal will have large piles of coal as well as a few conveyor belts. This was gifted to me from a friends old layout when he moved.
The Fox River swing bridge will be a liftout in front of the door. East side of Green Bay on the left, Western Lime & Cement on the right.
Love that tunnel through the wall. I've got three myself. Plus another one due. The three existing are in non-scenicked areas. But the walls are finished. As in sheetrock and painted. I'm not using foam, but plywood. I ran the plywood through the holes to minimize trackwork problems.
I look forward to the next installment!
AlienKing:
You are making great progress! I hope to follow in your tracks pretty soon. (Please pardon the entirely intentional pun!)
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!