I am close (+/- 1 yr) to finishing up the trackwork on my steel mill. So now is the time to start thinking about the next phase of my layout and what it will look like. The mill is a fully integrated steel mill located on Lake Michigan near South Chicago, think USS - Gary Works. Please take into account that where ever you stand in the room the mill will dominate the scene so I think a run through the praire or mountains down one wall would look a little out of place. I have my own ideas but I would appreciate any and all comments and your thoughts about what you would choose to put in the rest of the layout room. There are a couple of parameters to follow;
The layout is N scale
Modern class one railroading is what I want to model.
Secenery first, trains second
NO spaghetti
I am sure I will get into some ops sooner than later but now I enjoy running loooooong trains so please, let's look at this from the "now" perspective with an eye towards the future. Not from a future perspective.
I am not looking for a track plan right now, just looking to explore ideas for the setting, industries, locations, LDEs and such.
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The fat blue line on the left of the diagram is a set of windows and the red lines/semicircle on the left end of the mill are the tracks I have put in for train access to the mill from the rest of the layout. The room is not finished yet so I have some serious construction to do. Part of that will be adding a door to the room design somewhere on the right side of the room.
Since I'm not sure of your definition of "modern," and you're basing your layout on a Great Lakes steel mill, one thing I'd consider is adding a lakefront ore boat dock with at least two of the new Walthers Hulett Unloaders. I'm not sure if the N scale one has been released yet, but it should be coming soon.
I agree with your concept of putting an nice flowing wheat field would look totally out of place as well with just about any other rural type scene that is unless your employing view blocks. Most of the time if we want to get different types of scenery or different towns etc. on our railroad weather it be a prototype or freelance we have to employ view blocks such as mountains, tunnels, forests etc. to go from one scene to an other.
It sound like our railroad is set up so one can stand at any given corner of the room and see the entire layout so if thats the case I would go with urban scenery such as other industries, maybe tenement building ware house districts etc. Lets face it any kind of mill would never be built near prime real estate so your in the mists of the urban jungle. a heavy manufacturing facility come to mind that may purchase raw steel form the mill, maybe an auto plant. You know the big things that used to be in Detroit but are now all in Japan.
hi,
you have got a nice big room with even bigger ideas, but tmho you're on the wrong track. You've already almost finished one LDE and you are ending up with a three foot aisle along the eastwall. Narrow for an aisle and the shelf of an along-the-wall type layout. And that big oval would be so nice for your loooooooonnng trains.
My advice would be to think about a trackplan or trackconcept first, "roughing the main in", knowing where and how staging will be done.
So I would finish the room and the door first and use that time for rethinking your way of working. You can better change what you have build right now and find a working concept then ending up with an bad layout.
Your original question has an easy answer. Your pike is located in South Chicago, so go urban, urban and urban; but you will have to research that area. In MRP-2009 a Memphis based plan is presented; double tracked, industrial and transloading facilities all around; could be what you are looking for. What you really need is an overall concept first, finding suitable LDE's comes later.
Keep smiling, keep having fun
Paul
Thank you all for your input, these are just the kind of suggetions I am looking for. I guess I should have provided a bit more info in my initial post to clarify things.
Tom - I consider modern to be 90's through today. All my rolling stock and loco fleet is post 1983. I haven't picked a date range for the raildroad yet but I'm thinking somewhere around early 2000. There is an ore dock at the right end of my mill peninsula and it will eventually have an ore boat w/ self unloading. The raw materials yard is right nextdoor with two bridge cranes. I think the addition of Huellets would be a little off period. Thanks for the thoughts, please keep them coming.
Bob - I have been following your layout here for a while and may I say your modelling is very impressive. My layout is powered with Digitrax DCC and I have been N scale for over 20 years and don't see any reason to change now besides it would be to expensive. I have over 35 locos, about 300 cars, about 10 scratch built N mill buildings that have over 200 hrs of work into each plus a lot more buildings waiting to be built. Your thoughts on going HO are correct however, I can do twice in N what I could do in HO. I have several HO steel mill buildings that I have bashed to be N scale and I can run 35 car unit coal trains. In HO that unit train would be 20 ft long, a little too long I think. I believe I follow the Dream-Plan-Build methodology. I dreamed about the mill, planned it and am now building it. What I am looking for now is ideas to dream about for the rest of the basement. The 24'x5' mill is what I have now but I am looking to expand the layout into the rest of the room and that is what I am seeking your ideas for. Please look at the laft end of the mill, there are two red lines representing tracks that have been layed to allow train access from the rest of the (proposed) layout to the mill.
Allegheney - You hit the nail on the head. Unfortunetly I don't think I have room for view blocks as I think they require layout space on both sides of the block. I don't have the space for another peninsula on either side of the mill. The urban jungle is exactly what I was thinking though. S. Chicago is not exactly suburbia so there is a lot of heavy industry there. I was thinking down one wall (bottom wall) would be an urban setting and down the other (top wall) would be all industry but, I am open to and looking for other ideas.
Paul - Thanks for the ideas. Your thoughts on urban scenery is exactly what I was thinking. I used to live in downtown Chicago so I have lots of research in my head all ready done. Let me post another pic so you guys can better envision what I was thinking and then maybe it will better explain my ideas and what I was looking for.
Thanks again all for your input, I appreciate your time spent here.
Hopefully this will help. I used to live in downtown Chicago and commuted on I-290 to and from work. There is a TON of train traffic along this road. There is at least a doubl track main with 3 to 4 storage sidings for trains waiting for clearence. I would sit in traffic every day and watch/look at the trains. There would be unit coal trains with UP loco power, mixed consists with CP power, grain and lumber trains with CP power, Soo Line locals, CMW mixed freights and alot others. Most waiting to just go through Chicago and on to their destination. There was also a huge intermodal yard on the S. side of Chicago wich I would like to include hopefully in the NE corner of the layout. Again, I am looking for other ideas. I have posted a pic here of what I am thinking for the space but wanted to explore other options before I go to far down this road. Thanks again for your thoughts.
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Well it should be a good way to get your excercise in. If you start from one end and get to that peninsula you have a 48' plus walk around it to pick up you train again . Another problem is long trains are not going to run very far before they stop without a loop somewhere. If you really want that peninsula to be a steel mill put a backdrop down the center with steel mill pictures on both sides of it and make one side your receiving yard and the other your departure yard. You cn hide the connecting track at the end of the peninsula to transfer cars from one yard to the other.
Along the lines of urban jungle check out The Franklin & South Manchester of George Sellios His entire layout is urban scenery of the great depression era, no trees and flowing wheat fields for George. It works and works very very well. For a guy with zero experience he built himself one heck of a model railroad truly inspirational. When it comes to view blocks there are several schools of thought, yes you can build so the become part of the entire layout or isolate them to break the railroad up into smaller individual scenes. So you can put a tunnel in place as a view bloc but it doesn't necessarily have to be long enough to hide the entire train. Just enough to break up you line of sight some believe. I tend to agree as most of us are forced to do scene compression anyway, so even large structures that the train has to pass behind can act as a view block. The one thing that is so easily forgotten is that the scenery and structures are there to compliment the trains not the other way around.
Lee
I would put in a big yard like one of the many yards that are around the Chicago Area. Kevin
i like the idea of a long, double ended yard perhaps with an urban backdrop. maybe older commercial buildings like bars, flop house hotels, and perhaps a steel workers union hall on a slightly higher lever than the track area seperated by a street.
so even one or more other yards would not be out of place. when i worked in the E St Louis area, our neighbors were other railroads on either side of our yard. interchange with other roads adds a lot of switching and operating interest. you might consider pre-blocking the deliveries to a company like the BRC, BOCT, or IHB. for major connecting lines and just mine run the few odd ball cars and let them sort them out. just remember that in a major urban area, not all of the traffic to and from your mill will be for your railroad's exclusive line haul. a lot will be to and from local connections.
we had a westbound train out of Avon, i think it was called ES-1, that carried a TRRA block on the head end that the road crew set out at Madison and a GM&O block on the rear that we delivered with a yard engine. the rest of the train was unclassified stuff to be switched out and delivered to other connections.
if your steel mill includes a coke works, you might consider some related industries like coal tar chemicals and tie treating plants to use up all that creosote. Jennison Wright and Koppers come to mind. a boiler works would not be out of place either.
grizlump
QUOTE: " I dreamed about the mill, planned it and am now building it. What I am looking for now is ideas to dream about for the rest of the basement. The 24'x5' mill is what I have now but I am looking to expand the layout into the rest of the room and that is what I am seeking your ideas for. Please look at the laft end of the mill, there are two red lines representing tracks that have been layed to allow train access from the rest of the (proposed) layout to the mill."
Problem is you have done your steel mill in a way that is allready making a lot of options for your railroad impossible. Buildings can be truncated, your highway can be truncated, but can your railroad? You do have ideas how and where to put a highway in, but none about your tracks. BTW this is a model railroad forum.
You also had a dream about those trains waiting on "storage" tracks. Building a working junction in, can't be done as an after-thought. You talk about rail-access to the mill, a bit to vague to my taste. My feeling is you love to have dreams, you love to build, but you try to avoid planning as much as you can. And you love to dream about big scenes, but not so much about the tasks your railroad has to perform. Like : " I want long trains with ore coming in from North Chicago (staging) and bring them to an unloading dock near the mill. So I need a sizable recieving yard"; again the yard and staging can't be worked in as an after-thought. George Sellios did the very same, but he was very lucky having the space to build in yards and staging later. Are you so lucky also?
Keep smiling and keep having fun
Lee - I love the idea of twisting the steel mill in the available space idea but not so sure about the double deck. Buildings in my mill are large and might make a double deck, even not directly overhead, a bit impracticle. I'm going to work on the "twisting" idea, thanks
Kevin - we are on the exact same page. I was thinking along the north wall 1) because it is the longest 2)b/c it has a cool curve in it which will make it longer 3) it is at an end to the layout so maybe a stub-end yard or one with a runaround
Grizlump - thanks for the ideas of multiple yards, hadn't thought of that one. I especially like the "blocked" loads of cars destined for other yards, that sounds cool. Yes, the mill is fully integrated so has coke works, slag processing, O2 storage for the BOF and many other non-steel customers to work with.
Paulus Jas - What a wonderfully insightful and inspiring post you have managed. Let me see, according to you I have done nothing right so far
Paulus JasProblem is you have done your steel mill in a way that is allready making a lot of options for your railroad impossible.
most if not all future options for my layout are "impossible"
Paulus JasYou do have ideas how and where to put a highway in, but none about your tracks
you ASSUME I have no ideas about where to put my trackage
Paulus JasYou talk about rail-access to the mill, a bit to vague to my taste
my description of rail access to my mill is to vague for you - by the way there is a pic of it so how can that be too vague -
Paulus JasMy feeling is you love to have dreams, you love to build, but you try to avoid planning as much as you can
you accuse me of "trying to avoid planning as much as I can"
Paulus JasYou do have ideas how and where to put a highway in, but none about your tracks. BTW this is a model railroad forum
and somehow you manage to question whether my thread is "model railroader" enough to be worthy of posting here.
Thank you so much for your positive attitude towards my work, I can not wait until you post to my thread again and provide so much more needed feedback. All the ideas you have suggested are wonderfull and I can't wait to put your, what must be, exalted experience to work on my railroad. Please sir, I beg of you, post more.
I'm also an N scaler, and also very ops oriented. One important question, does your mill peninsula include a good sized support yard where traffic that comes into the mill gets sorted? If not, this would be a key feature to add. The steel mill I'm most familiar with is Sparrows Point in Baltimore, which actually sits out on a peninsula, with a suburb to one side, and a fairly rural area to the other. If your layout was Sparrows Point, then the area along the left wall would be the yard of the plant-owned Patapsco and Back River, with the B&O entering from the bottom wall, and the Conrail coming in from the top. The B&O route was more heavily industrial, with more sidings. The Conrail route was a long branch line that came down from Bayview Yard on the east side of town. That line actually was cornfields and marshes almost right up to the PBR Junction.
Using that as my basis, I would run a simple loop around the room, with a heavy industrial area along the B&O end below the peninsula, running counterclockwise, then have a large staging yard along the wall on the right side. The Conrail route would continue from staging up and around the top wall, which could be very rural and simple in nature, with the scene becoming gradually more industrial as it gets closer to the mill.
You operations (again based on the Baltimore model) would include trainloads of fluxing stone arriving via the B&O line (this started in 1963 with WM Power and cars), and coal and ore arriving via the Conrail. The thru trains bring everything to the PBR yard, which would handle shifting everything into the yard.
You could also run locals over the B&O and Conrail routes to switch the other operations near the plant. Examples here include Steel and Wire Products, which took in wire from the mill, and shipped out nails, hardware cloth etc., caulk and paint manufacturers, and other heavy industry.
I wouldn't bother with intermodal or a lot of other traffic, just concentrate the ops on the steel mill. Have enough other industry to mix it up a little, and a loop to run lazy circles while you're shifting cars within the mill.
This sounds like an awesome layout. I'd like to see more photos of the mill complex as it evolves...
...Or, you could just throw it all away and build it in HO scale. I love it when people say dumb stuff like that!
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Spearo, I am currently living in the Chicago area and have made trips down to Ogden Dunes, Gary, Burns Harbor, etc. while driving and along the South Shore Railroad. While you are correct in saying that mountains would look a little out of place some prairie land and some old sand dunes may not be out of place. Here is a link, I hope that it works http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=s&lat=41.63173&lon=-87.153115&zoom=15&q1=Ogden%20Dunes%20Indiana .The approaches into the mills will have some grasses and maybe an old sand dune or two. I would not call myself an expert on scenery technique but I think it can be done effectively. If you still live in the Chicagoland area take a trip along the South Shore Line or get on Google Earth and look at an aerial image or two. Just my two cents.