Large City Operated As A Super-Industry?

[METRO]

Alright so I'm finally going to start building the large city that will be the focus of my layout this summer. As such I've had to put together a freight movement system with a very specific set of ideas in mind.

My question is: Does anyone think it will work?!?

Here it is:

The city is served by a local carrier, which is owned by local government. I also wanted to have lots of switching in an urban setting that would offer various degrees of complexity for different operators.

So I started to think, what if I treated the entire city as one large complex? The idea would be that I'd break up the city into switching districts. Each switching district would recieve cars and have others taken away by a transfer freight.

The transfer freight would travel between two yards (one for incoming and one for outgoing freight) would drop off cars at each switch district and pick up outgoing on sidings. Any inner city traffic would then be taken back with the transfer locomotive.

Anyone think this system could work?

~METRO

[Anonymous]

NO WAY! Just kidding- It sounds great, makes me wonder why i didnt think of that! Your plan is very interesting, complex, but interesting. Good luck! Ben

[chutton01]

Are you proposing to have local freights work out of the various yards servicing the industrial leads and tracks, and transfer jobs serving the various yards around the city (like a belt or terminal railroad) dropping off and pickup up car and delivering them to/from the Class I connection(s).
Because this seems like what a lot of terminal roads do/did (not sure how many were muncipally owned)

[Anonymous]

The Canton RR does that all the time. Baltimore Md is one big switching area for that road.

My armchair empire plans focus on keeping one city supplied instead of actually "switching" a city.

If you like it, Go for it!

[tatans]

Didn't someone post about the same question a while back and the results seemed to be it would be an ominous task at least, my gosh, the buildings alone would take up a lifetime, not to let anyone discourage you, more power to you, keep this forum posted as to progress, Good Luck ! ! !

[Anonymous]

There's been a few articles in Model Railroader lately about urban switching layouts. Great opprortunities for scratchbuilding large structures, freestanding or as basckground flats.

Wayne

[CBQ_Guy]

I have toyed with this exact concept myself, though I would call it Small City Operated As A Super-Industry, or, Part of a City Operated As A Super-Industry. It should look extremely realistic if you keep the buildings large and the spurs to them prototypically long.

However, I've pretty much decided at this point is that what you end up with is just a really big switching layout, and I want to have some open, out in the country running and small towns as well, so I probably won't be doing it as all city area.

[underworld]

Sounds great! Make sure to post pics.

underworld

[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

[nslakediv]

excellent idea. maybe a wide river crossing seperating the two cities. large span of bridges. As for all the buildings, welcome to kitbashing and check out backdropwarehouse.com. have fun.

[METRO]

To keep the buildings from taking a lifetime (I do plan to scratchbuild almost all of them) I intend to use mostly sheet plastics, cardstock and other easy to build with materials. I've got a good level of experience building architectural models from my time as an Architecture major.

As for the layout, to keep the line from becoming a giant switching puzzle, I'm putting in a high-line for commuter trains that will be very linear and have a minimum turn radius of 30'. The high-line will connect to the suburban area of the layout and continue with the commuter line that is the focus of my layout.

This part of the layout will be around-the-walls style and will be a thick 2' wide. (This isn't going to be that much of a problem as I'm rather tall and therefor have pretty good reach so I can easily make it over 2'. ) This will allow me to have prototypically long sidings with the main track close to the edge of the layout. I'm probably just going to use code 83 for the switching tracks and code 100 for the high-line in order to have the largest possible selection of track components.

The main difference between this layout and ones featured in MR (such as the Boston dock switching section from a few years ago) is the operation style. I want to eliminate large yards within the city in favor of the transfer freight and long set out tracks. This would allow for a dense urban area without much breakup from big yards.

~METRO

[Jetrock]

Industrial belt lines were not uncommon. Generally they weren't owned by the city, they were operated by a local Class 1 or branchline railroad. My layout is built around that motif (the whole layout is set within one city, and is based around switching way freights and interchange traffic.)