I know from my humble opinion, that not many modelers enjoy doing harbor scenes because a few reasons, but when modelers do model the great warehouses, busy, and loud harbor scene it looks unbelievable, amazing, and realistic.
Free feel to share your pictures of your dock scenes.
Mr. LMD, Owner, founder
The Central Chicago & Illinois Railroad
The 'water' is actually green celophane spread across extruded foam, which was temporarily positioned on sawhorses over the aisle. The ship sits on a 9" ledge during normal layout operating conditions.
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
WOW! That is very detailed and looks like it could be a real port. I would be scared to be the engineer to make the ship late. How did you get the ore to settle?
Thanx for the kind words. The 'ore' is actually a set of crude papier mache 'hills' painted brown, with Wooodland Scenics ore-colored ballast sprinkled over them.
CSX_road_slug Thanx for the kind words. The 'ore' is actually a set of crude papier mache 'hills' painted brown, with Wooodland Scenics ore-colored ballast sprinkled over them.
You are welcome. I bet you have many stunned visitors when they see your layout operation? I couldn't tell that was paper mache because it looks real.
Here are some scenes from the fishing village harbor on the Boothbay Railway Village layout. The "water" will remain painted plywood until all the shors scenes are complete, that we will make the BIG POUR.
General view from the base of the pennsula
Stinson Canning
"1930s" photo of the cannery, the depot, a mixed train, and the Beach Cliff Sardines man (taken from a photo of teh real 40' man at Prospect Harbor, ME
Cannery and Lighthouse
Fishermans Memorial Park
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Mr. Paine,
The detail and the exact placement of certain things make the harbor look busy and calm at the same time.
The fish train better be on time or someone would have to clean out the cars by hand.
How's the weather around them shores lol
Some shots from the New England and North Coast RR
.
@OLLEVON
That is one busy harbor you have there. I bet if that was real it would be hard to talk without all of the noise going on all around on you, esp. on a busy day.
Amazing work guys, very, very impressive modelling!!!
It must have taken them at least a year or two to complete that portion depending on their busy schedule.
Layout is in early stage. I am working on a harbor... a Texas island seaport in the mid 1950s. My port extends 60% of the way AROUND my shelf layout.
Computer 3D model rendered down over 10 years ago to plan dock cargo shed scene behind passenger terminal.
Layout plan for passenger station, cargo shed, shrimp fleet area...
compared to prototype area
Mockup of shrimp fleet harbor
Export grain elevator (mockup)
Elevator mockup, unrestored oil rig (actually a bronze safety award casting found at a garage sale), test cutout background ship, cardboard cargoshed cutout mockup...
Actual elevator (now demolished) and offshore rig
Roof section for dockside cargo shds that will hide staging, test placed with mockup cargoshed fronts.
Demara Yard -open staging impersonating "anonymous other railroad"...port switching railroad yard and Santa Fe yard will be built as a "sesa of tracks" in FRONT of Demara
More of Demara yard, with cargo sheds and sugar import terminal on background.
Tail end of Demara Yard.
@LEIGHANT
You sir have an amazing looking harbor section on your layout. Please keep us all fellow modelers up to date with the construction and build because I'm sure we will love to see how the end product look. What type of locomotives will be servicing the harbor or the passenger station?
Mr. LMDWhat type of locomotives will be servicing the harbor or the passenger station?
I found that a funny question because, probably unlike most modelers, I take motive power sort of for granted, and obsess about interesting scenes, operations and freight cars. BUT to answer your question-
The passenger station will service the Santa Fe Texas Chief and mail and express #5/6 which had been the Ranger before losing its name. Pulled by Santa Fe F7s and F3s, PA/PB sets, occasionally a DL109 with an E-6B booster made the run.
Switching at the passenger station- I have a couple of SW-9s and an SW-1500. I am real proud of a Fairbanks Morse H-12-44 I redetailed for Santa Fe #563 but it broke a part and I don't know where or how to get it.
Servicing the harbor will probably be diesel switchers operated by the Port of Karankawa. Galveston has its own port-operated Galveston Wharves Railroad. I have an S-2 that I decorated for a fictitious logging line on a former layout- but I might want nto make that a Santa Fe, since ATSF used S-2s way more than EMD switchers.
Then again, I might copy a practice used in the Port of Corpus Christi for many years. The Port owned tracks and the three trunkline railroads that served Corpus Christi- Missouri Pacific, Southern Pacific and Texas Mexican- took turns providing crews and locos to switch the port- a year at a time. This would give me an excuse to run some other roadname switchers. I especially would want to work in a switcher from the Galveston Houston and Henderson, a line owned jointly by MoPac and MKT. I found a photo of a switcher (which I don't have rights to display here) carrying the heralds of both MoPac and MKT.
And finally, besides transfer runs to the port, there is one movement run by the Santa Fe over port trackage. In the early 20th century, Santa Fe had a line to a carferry dock at the east end of the port area, and served a few industries along this line as well.
After the carferry operation ended, the tracks became part of the Port of Galveston RR. However, Santa Fe retained the right to serve the non-dockside industries on that line. So a Santa Fe switcher will navigate the port line to an ice plant, which also leased refrigerated space to a meat distributor-
(yet still another UNCOMPLETED scene...)
and to the Peanut Butter Warehouse...
to be bashed from 2 DPM Goodnight Mattress kits, minus the top floor which is a recent condo rental addition.
The peanut butter connection gives me an excuse to tie this industry to the Dixie Darlin Peanut Butter plant I operated on my East Texas layout...
That sir seem like a challenge that I'm sure you will complete and have operation in no time. I love the full detail and history of the railroad and the area as you are modeling. Switch locomotives are my favorite locomotive and operations. Please do us a favor and post pictures as you go along and when it's finished as well. I love the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe myself.
This is a small inlet in Moose Bay, just under the railroad bridge that spans it.
I did it with Envirotex. That's a Frenchman River lobster boat coming in to unload its catch at the clam bar in the background.
Elsewhere on the layout, I'm working on a carfloat terminal at Mooseport. Because the ramp and the float itself will protrude into the aisle, I chose to finish the town first. I wanted to get an old port look, with street-running girder rail and cobblestones. This is an earlier shot, with the buildings in place. The actual track running down to the carfloat curves around from upper left to lower right.
I put in a canal, similar to the old mill waterways from the days when mills were water-powered. It's dry right now, but once the scene is finished I'll put Envirotex in there, too.
Here's an 0-6-0T tank engine curling around through the mill complex, crossing the canal bridge and heading down towards the carfloat.
One of these days, I'll have the apron and carfloat in place. And when I do, the carfloat will tie up for the night and the sailors will head down to Lucky's Bar or the Brass Rat for some "socializing."
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Absolutely stunning pics. I like harbor scenes, too, although I don't model them myself (currently).
If anyone is looking for a prototype, period era or modern ops, I can suggest a place that can be very inspirational, which is Duluth, MN/Superior, WI.
Classic Trains did a story with great pics some time back, IIRC, but there's lots of info out there. The old station in Duluth is the center for rail-related museum and operations, giving you an excuse to have all kinds of ancient to semi-modern stuff right next to the most modern power.
If you want to do some research, there's a tall hotel (Marriott??) just a couple of blocks from the station. Get a room on the harborside, set up your scanner (lots of boat and port traffic, plus local rail ops), and enjoy. My wife is a railfan, too, and we've spent several very enjoyable days doing this when traveling around Lake Superior.
If you want old time port activity, then search for Houghton/Hancock, Michigan on the Keewenaw Peninsula. I've been collecting info and some models to maybe do a set of modules of downtown Houghton, circa 1956. If I should live so long and exhaust the possibilities in Colorado...
EDIT: MrB, your pic makes another very good point for port ops. There's often street running involved, which is pretty cool in itself.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
@MISTERBEASLEY
I love the detail and the big city feel with the mill and the tight corners for a small locomotive to travel around the rails. Cannot wait to see the water added to finish out the amazing look of the layout.
“I'm sure you will complete and have operation in no time.”
I have been building for ten years and wired up the first 15 inches of operating track this week. Delayed by working on master’s history thesis.
What type of locomotives will be servicing the harbor or the passenger station?
I think the rolling stock is much more pertinent to operating a harbor layout. My operations require a specialized fleet.
Ordinary 40 foot boxcars for export grain by the “trainload.” (15 or 16 cars make up a layout-sized selectively compressed trainload.) Two trainloads a day in harvest season. Very few 3-bay covered hoppers as they were just coming into use in middle 1950s.
Also large movement of boxcars for cotton export. Trainload a day in harvest season.
Special sulphur gondolas (a design used only by Santa Fe and Southern Pacific), a cut of 6 or 8 cars every three or four days to the world’s largest sulphur export point. (I have only kitbashed 2 so far.)
Solid train of reefers once a week when the banana ship comes in on its regular schedule from Central America.
Plus special “superinsulated” refrigerator cars for frozen seafood shipments,
Special “refrigerator-standards” boxcars for refrigerator car salt,
Ice cars to bring in ice not produced locally,
Dry ice cars to supply the fishing fleet.
Fleet of a dozen or more 2-bay hoppers for ore, cars are concentrated in the seaport ONLY when a shipload of ore is scheduled to be docked.
Solid-bottom mill gondolas for steel plate and shape used in shipbuilding, and “box tankcars” for welding gases used in shipbuilding...
I am trying to dispose of N scale pulpwood cars used on my old forest layout, because the seaport has no paper mill and pulpwood simply would not be shipped there.
I bet the local fishermen are grumpy because of your trains going and comng lol.