My grandfather grew up near Tyrone and my grandmother is from Altoona so your layout has peaked my interest and I would love to see it but I digress. I went to Altoona a few years back and we visited a place called the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum. You will learn a lot about the town and people. I recommend going there (if you haven't gone there already). If I remember correctly, I think steel was one of the biggest industries in Altoona. I hope this helped out.
PikesburghThanks so much Ed! This will be a big help.
Glad it helped. If there are specific areas you want to see let me know. I can copy other pages from the CT-1000. It covers many branch lines, too.
Ed
Thanks so much Ed! This will be a big help.
Hi,
The PRR CT-1000 is a good place to start:
PRR_CT_1000 by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_CT_1000_164 by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_CT_1000_172 by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_CT_1000_206 by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_CT_1000_222 by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_CT_1000_224 by Edmund, on Flickr
This will give you locations of sidings and the name of the business. The rest is between you and Google. You might be able to find track diagrams or topographic maps or Sanborn Fire Maps of specific areas.
Here is a good resource:
http://pennsyrr.com/index.php/maps/97-maps/216-track-charts
The PRRT&HS is also a good place to look. Use the index of back issues of the Keystone Magazine. Browsing the Keystone Modeler (TKM) can also provide some information, too.
http://www.prrths.com/
Hope that helps, Ed
I'm currently mulling the idea of rebuilding my HO scale layout because I made quite a few mistakes when I first started, having known little about the prototypical aspects of railroads. My railroad is based from the late 1940s to the 1960s. All of the following areas are staying on my layout for sure. The eastern most town on the layout is Tyrone. Then we head a few miles west to Altoona, through Horseshoe Curve, a short distance through the Gallitzin tunnels into Cresson. At the very end of the layout is the Pitcairn yard which is just visible staging with some flat background buildings so there's at least a little bit of work to do there.
Altoona is the main piece of my layout, with Horseshoe Curve and helper units being a major part of the layout as well. I'm not putting my layout size, only because I don't want to influence people's responses. I can pick and choose and compress industries that I feel will fit what I'm looking for. One of the industries I'm looking for is something that can be a local, where I switch it and bring the cars back to Altoona. Basically I'm looking to funnel a lot of freight back to Altoona before I send it west to Pitcairn due to Altoona being the focal point of the layout.
Starting in Tyrone, I have the paper mill and passenger station with a small town. The next industry on the layout that I know for sure (not counting Altoona Works, I have that pretty well figured out) is the helper servicing in Cresson.
After Cresson, or maybe in Cresson, is a coal mine. I'm a big fan of coal, so there will be a coal train headed to Altoona/Tyrone each day for the steam engines, to power the Tyrone paper mill etc etc. There will also be one headed west to Pitcairn.
My remaining industries are a steel mill (pretty small, but I like steel mills), a power plant (fed by coal) and a small cattle pen. I also have half a dozen covered hoppers for cement, but haven't yet decided how I'll build the cement plant. I also am looking for an area that loaded a lot of scrap. I have half a dozen gondolas and scrap loads. I was thinking about having Johnstown be the steel mills, but I was hoping to have them either in Pitcairn for Turtle Creek (Pitcairn needs some work to do after all), or somewhere close enough to Altoona that I could send the cars back to Altoona to be put on a train headed west to Pitcairn. (Pitcairn has interchange tracks to send freight to places like Chicago, Detroit, etc etc).
Where would be best for these industries? Also, were there any other industries close to the Cresson-Altoona-Tyrone area? The size of the industries does not matter, I can always compress them/use them as flat backgrounds to save space. Any help would really be appreciated! Thanks.