I have posted pictures of railroad scenes in Corpus Christi, Texas from time to time. A gentleman in Massachusetts contacts me for photos, saying he wanted to model some Corpus Christi trains and scenes in HO on a 5x9 table, with possible extension around the walls. I decided it would be fun to do an unsolicited layout design.
In the time period from 1960 into the 1990s, Corpus Christi had two main railroads. The Missouri Pacific, shown in blue (later UP) ran more or less along the south side of the Port of Corpus Christi inner channel with a fair-sized yard out on the edge of town, a smaller yard, Nueces Bay closer to town and a passenger depot at the uptown end of the line. Texas Mexican, shown in green, is about a mile or two south of the MoPac, running due west toward the Mexican border at Laredo.
Southern Pacific once had its own line into Corpus Christi from the north, shown in orange, until 1959 when a high level highway bridge replaced a bascule drawbridge that carried rail and auto traffic across the port entrance. SP then came into Corpus Christi via trackage rights over the MoPac and ran its trains to a new expanded yard, built jointly by SP and the TexMex on the TexMex west of the city. All three railroads, MP, SP and TM, took turns operating and maintaining Terminal Association tracks serving the Port. (shown in black).
On a 5x9 table in HO?
I chose to use one side of the table, the top side in this drawing, to represent scenes and operations along the MoPac line, and the other side of the table, at the bottom of the drawing, for scenes and features along the TexMex.
Each railroad generally switches “its” side of the layout. At the top left of the plan is the MoPac depot with a passenger platform track. The station served passenger trains until 1962.
1949 photo:
The station still stands, now without its awning, now in use as a Union Pacific freight office.
To the south of the station are a couple of warehouses which used to have a rail spur alongside, a possible location for switching. I drew one such warehouse in the trackplan with its short spur, long gone, although the spur’s loading dock is still there.
To squeeze this building and industry switching location into the layout and accommodate an end turnback curve for the layout’s oval loop would require some special construction. The warehouse would need to be built with a concave curve to allow for the curve track. There was not a track curve right at this prototype location, but there WAS a track going south a block and a half west, shown as the SP Transfer connection on the small prototype map at the beginning of this post. Although this building did not have a concave curved wall on the side indicated on the trackplan, this same actual building has a CONVEX curved wall on the opposite side, apparently modified in this fashion when a freeway frontage road right-of-way “bit” into the warehouse!
At the middle of the turnback curve on the right end of the trackplan, I drew a bridge over the track. This humpbacked rustic wooden bridge (“Load Limit Two Tons”) actually ran over the SP transfer connection just west of the cemetery. I photographed the bridge in 1975, when the SP tracks were gone. The bridge itself was demolished the following year. A quaint little bridge with a prototype justification for existing three blocks from the center of Corpus Christi’s Uptown financial district.
South of the depot and a little west is Old Bayview Cemetery, established in 1845 when Texas joined the Union and Gen. Zachary Taylor occupied the place to show the American flag in territory claimed by Mexico. A shuttle steamboat exploded killing nine men, and a burial place was established. The cemetery has veterans of the Texas Revolution, Mexican War, Civil War, victims of yellow fever epidemics, white, Negro and Mexican. Quite a landmark to give a layout a sense of place. Notice the MoPac depot visible in the middle of the photo just over the cemetery fence.
Across the street from the cemetery on the trackplan, I drew some rectangles representing small low-income housing. Maybe I drew more little houses than would fit. Most have been torn down or rehabilitated now, but the slum neighborhood was a reality back in the days when the passenger trains ran. I watched as houses were being torn down near here in 1968 for a rent subsidy housing project, observed the construction of the old “shotgun” houses, drew sketches and built a model in 1969 as a feasibility test to see if I could build models in the new N scale I was considering. This model is in a rural setting but the real shotgun houses were all jammed close together.
MoPac had a wye about half a mile from the depot, which was still there until about 10 years ago. A wye is hard to fit self-contained on a table not much bigger than an oval of track. My oval of track on this layout involves a compromise using 22” radius curves – just a bit easier than “train-set” 18” radius. That also involves compromising on our passenger cars, using 65 or 70 foot “shorties’ rather than full scale-length cars, which really ought to have 30” or broader curves. While a wye is difficult to fit, a cutoff across the oval to form a reverse loop will fit fine, take only 2 turnouts compared to 3, and can be used to turn a train the same as a wye, in the same number of moves. I am using one reverse loop cutoff on this layout to approximate the “action” of turning the MP passenger train at CC (and other operations) which was actually done on a wye.
The layout plan is oriented in “map directions.” The top of the plan is “north”, with the MoPac on the north side of town. Both MoPac and TexMex leave Corpus Christi toward the west, so the left/ west end of the 5x9 layout would be the end up against the wall, where it can connect to around-the-walls tracks someday. The trackplan concentrates on the in-town running and switching, which CAN be operated on a limited-size layout. The large main yards for BOTH the TexMex and MoPac are way out on the edge of town, have been since the 1950s as far as I know. I did NOT try to include them on the 5x9 table. I think a moderate size Tex-Mex yard, and a similar staging yard could be accommodated later on a round-the-walls addition. I tried to design a layout that would work both by itself and as part of that larger “someday” layout.
I worked in a “one-track yard” for the MoPac, and a siding on the Tex-Mex side that can function as a “one-track yard.” What do I mean by a “one-track yard?” On a small self-contained table layout, a “yard” is a place to stick a train when it is not running round and round, a place on the modeled layout for it to go to and come from. Secondarily it may be used to switch cars in and out of a consist. It is often more efficient to have a number of tracks to hold cars for every needed classification, but car switching CAN be done with just two tracks side-by-side. One yard track alongside a main track can do the job as long as we stay out of the way of mainline trains. So I did that on this plan. This plan has two “one-track yards” that do that job and that somewhat suggest the appearance of real life features on the railroad.
On the north/ MoPac side of the layout (top of the plan), I labeled the NUECES BAY YARD. This uses 18” radius curves to make one stub-end spur track to fit inside the 22” radius oval loop curves needed to accommodate passenger trains. The 18” curves will be okay for 40 foot freight cars. The “yard” will park a 6 or 7 foot long MoPac freight train. There is also a loading rack for tank cars alongside, to allow some train operation related to the area’s refineries.
This prototype picture shows the Nueces Bay yard with a slight curve, and the tank farms in the background. Tank farms are probably easier to model than refineries.
At the far left end of the trackplan, I drew a pipe bridge over the tracks. This type of structure can be modeled using a signal bridge kit, removing the signals, and adding piping. A refinery can appear on the background. It would be hard to work in a complete model of a refinery complex in a limited area between tracks on a layout, but using the pipe bridge, the entire complex does not have to be on the same side of the tracks.
I drew in a track leading off the layout to staging, and one short spur off it labeled “engine terminal.” It is a place to stick one engine that is not actively pulling a train, and it would be easy to add a fueling and sanding facility there. One could also NOT have the turnout and use the track that goes to future staging as the engine terminal until the staging is added. MoPac had a rather minimal outdoor facility with two or three tracks, fuel, sand and water racks.
They still call it “the roundhouse”although it is all outdoors.
This is what can be worked into the top of the 5x9 trackplan. The bottom of the plan, representing the Texas Mexican, is another story.
The bottom portion of this trackplan for a 5x9 HO layout represents tracks and scenes along the Texas Mexican Railway in Corpus Christi.
At the bottom right of the trackplan is a much-cut-down representation of a corner of the Gulf Cotton Compress, “notched” to provide right of way for the end curve. The compress was/is a complex about three blocks long along the east-west Tex Mex tracks and extending some four blocks north. (It still exists but seems somewhat inactive.) Some of the buildings are quonsets, much like the Rix kits but larger.
The Rix kits are 24 scale feet across, 33 scale feet long, 12 feet high, which seems to represent the most common WWII quonset, which was 24 feet across by 48 feet long. It was called “20x48” because that was considered the usable interior space. The quonsets at Gulf compress appear to be based on the larger “Quonset warehouse” version, which had units 40 feet across, 100 feet long and 20 feet high. The quonset design might be hard to cut off to accommodate a track curve.
Most of the buildings at Gulf Compress are concrete framed, which would be easier to build with an angled or curved back. Note the sloping tracks on the sliding doors. The doors can be held open with a fusible low-temperature-melting metal connection. In case of a major fire, the low-temp “fuse” melts and the door slides closed by gravity, without needing human attention or electrical sensors, motors, etc. These are an easily modeled but distinctive identifying feature of cotton warehouses.
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/542/cccompressa.jpg
The spur in front of Gulf compress along the bottom of the trackplan follows the alignment of the Tex Mex mainline to its uptown depot, which also had parallel had spurs along the mainline for cotton handling when the compress was more active and using rail shipping. The end curve of the layout’s loop mainline at the right-bottom of the plan follows the line of what was an industry lead and a connection between the MoPac and TexMex in real life. I marked it as the Gulf cutoff on my schematic map of Corpus Christi railroads. Because both the Missouri Pacific and Tex Mex had access to switch the Gulf compress, I would have both railroads switch the compress on the layout, even though the Compress spur is on “the Tex Mex side of the layout.”
The Gulf cutoff route was used to handle President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s private railroad when he came to Corpus Christi in April 1943 to inspect the Naval Air Station for World War II.
The president’s train came into CC on the MoPac, transferred via Gulf cutoff over to the Tex Mex and then over to the NAS branch. I have a friend at the local historical society who witnessed FDR’s train past this point.
The Tex-Mex has a number of “boxy” industry buildings in two miles or so west of Gulf compress. I picked a produce company to fit in a leftover space. The real industry is only a block from Gulf. It actually fits on a curving siding, and it would receive perishable fruit and vegetables by refrigerator car- giving us a place for another car type on the layout.
I drew in a concrete ready-mix plant without much detail, just because it gives a contrast to the boxy warehouse buildings elsewhere and is typical of an industry along the TM at the edge of CC. I think there are kits, fairly common looking facility, that receives cement in 2-bay covered hoppers and gravel and crushed stone in gondolas.
The curve leading into the reverse loop cutoff on the bottom of the plan approximates a real life track arrangement, which I labeled “SP Junction” on my CC schematic. When the bascule bridge used by SP trains over the port entrance was removed in 1960, SP cooperated with TexMex in expanding a yard west of the city for joint use of the two railroads. SP also got trackage rights to come into Corpus Christi over the Missouri Pacific. This track, labeled the McBride line, was built to allow SP trains to get from the MoP over to the Tex Mex to access the yard. There also is a TexMex siding alongside this junction, probably used for runarounds on the prototype. The “TexMex siding” and one end of the reverse loop connection approximate this real track situation at this location (although they may not necessarily be operated like the real tracks. The Tex Mex siding and its extension to the left end of the layout provide a place to “park” a short TexMex train without blocking an oval continuous route or the reverse loop. It is also useful for runarounds and possibly for meets of short trains.
Two or three metal scrap yards are on the TM within a mile of this junction. Scrap often went from them to steel mills in northern Mexico via the Tex Mex. I put a scrap yard into the right end of the layout’s TexMex scene. Because the reverse loop cutoff has to run from one end curve at the top to the other at the bottom to fit in, I could not run a spur into the scrapyard directly from the TM main. A TM switcher will have to go onto the cutoff track to switch it.
One nearby scrapyard on the TM has an unusual appearance- silhouette palm trees with frond leaves made of old scrap plate iron welded onto steel poles. If you model this, viewers will tell you that you have unrealistic trees until you show them the photo.
Back in the 1960s when developers built Corpus Christi’s first large shopping center, beautification advocates questioned their paving over a huge expanse as an asphalt parking lot. The shopping center shuffled off that criticism by bragging that they were
the community by planting 100 palm trees. So one of the scrapyards, lambasted as an eyesore, decided to get on the beautification bandwagon by fabricating their own scrap metal “palm trees.” It has already been modeled on a modular layout that goes around Texas, but it wouldn’t hurt to do it again.
The 5x9 table layout as shown can have three trains set up. A TexMex local freight switcher can work the scrapyard, concrete plant, produce house and compress, and stay on the “Tex Mex siding” to clear the layout for other trains. A Missouri Pacific local freight train can switch the tank loading rack, the warehouse and the compress, and stay in “Nueces Bay Yard” to clear the main. A Missouri Pacific passenger train can run from the station out, around the reverse loop and back. I couldn’t figure a way to work in hidden staging on the 5x9, but I worked in connections so track can run off to connect with staging or even a round-the-walls run to Laredo. That’s another story.
Hi leighant,
i do love the information you presented about Corpus Christi. The pics of some scenes are awesome, so I can understand you are very interested in building scenes of the railroads (once) running in town.
What is missing are more detailed trackplans, like "spins" of the area. However I do not like the model trackplan you provided. I will try to explain the reasons behind it.
Just having a track and calling it Corpus Christi Mopac Terminal is not my style. Trying to be closer to the prototypical trackplan is my game. This start by studying the room-space. When like in another thread some modeler has a 9x5 pingpong table, he could also turn the parts to have a 10x4,5 table.
Looking more closely into the room might reveal other options. Those huge tables need room for access along 3 sides, so the real space occupied is much larger. The 10x4,5 table need at least a 10x7 space, not counting the aisles along the two outer sides.
Suddenly far more options are available. Important choices like scale, radii and must-have scenery items are to be considered as well. These choices might have consequences for the kind of equipment that can be operated. I did like pic of the passenger terminal with its three tracks in front of it, keeping the feeling that LDE might require more length in HO than available on a 9x5. It might also be a waste of the precious little space available looking at operational possibilities.
The absence of staging can be resolved by a cassette or removable addition like on this year's project layout. The need of a reversing loop is not made clear at all.
IMHO in the proces leading to your plan many steps are skipped. It are just those steps, often neglected by many who are going to the drawing board to soon, which are making trackplaning interesting.
The above should not be confused with trying to get grip on the size of the space. In my design, which is not really an effort to model CC, the length of the passing siding above the yard on the pensisula is to short to operate lengthy trains. This runaround could also be used by the passenger train to get the engine at the proper side for the return trip. These concerns might lead to skipping passenger trains and using a freight-only smaller radius. Also the track down to an underground wye is not found on the prototype. Is this track an asset or should it be skipped? Anyway lots of questions are to be answered, and not many know all the answers before going to start making drawings.
With regards and thanks again for the information about Corpus Christi.
Paul
(a typo: why = wye)
I agree with much of what Paulus Jas says. I usually prefer starting with an analysis of the space and the prototype objective “before going to the drawing board.” Most of my planning for my own railroad is based on a linear shelf style around the walls.
However in this case, I was interested in suggesting an approach for a modeler who has said he wants to model Corpus Christi passenger trains in HO starting on a 5x9 foot table, and later running off with a shelf layout to model the Tex Mex line from Corpus Christi to Laredo. I do not know the gentleman’s room size. I would imagine the space to need to be at least the 5x9 table, which I would place with a 5 foot end against a wall... then three feet aisles around three sides of the layout, and a foot-and-a-half or two for a shelf around the walls. Equals a room about 14 feet by 14 feet.
My objective in drawing up a plan for the gentleman interested in a CC layout was to show how SOME of the scenes and OPERATIONS of an actual location could be at least approximated on a table layout (though table is not my usual preference). I decided to post it on the trains.com layouts and layout building forum as a partial reaction to “Decent Design for a HO Double Reversing 5 x 9.”
Paulus wrote: “These concerns might lead to skipping passenger trains...” but that was a main objective of the layout builder. His parents rode on “the last Missouri Pacific passenger train out of Corpus Christi,” an event which just happened to be featured in the local newspaper this past week.
“CONTRIBUTED PHOTO “ Published in Corpus Christi Caller Times, August 22, 2012.
The end of the passenger train era was recorded on June 20, 1962, when the Missouri Pacific ran its last passenger coach out of Corpus Christi.
This train operated as a “stub” of the Houston-to-Brownsville “Valley Eagle.” A train left Houston southbound with day coaches and a lunch grill. At Odem, Texas, one or two coaches were cut out for the 17 mile trip into Corpus Christi. The same two cars went the opposite direction to consolidate with a northbound train from Brownsville to Houston. So the train was fairly modest in its later years. (At one time it ran San Antonio to Corpus Christi.)
Layout builder was also interested in running the Texas Mexican Express, which ran Corpus Christi to Laredo and return on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays 1986 to 1989. The Tex Mex Express ran with two or three heavyweight coaches, a lightweight coach and lightweight lounge car, and a caboose to carry baggage, and sometimes a chartered private car. This shot shows one of its shorter consists.
I could not see building separate stations and passenger tracks on a 5x9 layout, so I had to choose between the Missouri Pacific depot which has stood since at least as far back as the 1930s (shown earlier in this thread), the portable depot used for the Tex Mex in 1986-1989 (and since moved for use as a tourist information office...)
Or possibly the depot used by the Texas Mexican from about 1910 to 1940, built to the same plan as this depot which still stands at Alice, Texas, or other duplicates of the design in Kingsville and in Bay City.
I picked the Missouri Pacific depot and tried to work in prototype features and operations.
Paulus Jas asked for “more detailed trackplans.” Here is one of the area from the MoPac depot to the wye 2/3rds of a mile northwest, assembled from Sanborn’s Insurance maps, satellite photos and ground photos. Nueces Bay Yard would be just past the west leg of the wye, off the drawing.
The proposed trackplan has selectively compressed some of the prototype elements. Three tracks in front of the prototype depot have become two, one of which is the through oval continuous route. Two warehouses have become one, with a chunk cut out of the one. A humpback bridge which existed on an SP crosstown connection has been placed on the end curve of the oval loop, about a block on the wrong side of its actual location. The entry curve to the reverse loop near the depot runs the same direction as the east leg of the prototype wye. The real Nueces Bay Yard begins just west of the wye. It condensation into one track likewise begins just west of the corresponding entrance to the layout’s reverse loop. And so on.
Yes, the MoPac loco facility was more than just one track labeled “engine terminal.” It was two tracks for locos, with a main track on one side and a track for company service cars on the other.
I could find no evidence of an escape crossover for the MoPac passenger platform tracks for an arriving passenger locomotive to run around its cars. But it was not needed. Oassenger trains nosed into the wye and then back into the station. I heard reminiscences of a number of casual riders who remembered “backing up into Corpus Christi” and finding it odd for a train to run backwards.
When the layout is run as a 5x9 table only, the short Corpus Christi stub of the Valley Eagle could depart forward from the station track running counterclockwise. Then it could run through the reverse loop to change to clockwise, becoming the “other train” heading into Corpus Christi. But before arriving, it has to back through the reverse loop to simulate turning on the wye to back into the depot. An operator does not need to think of it as “having” to run backwards over the reverse loop, but as replicating parts of an actual journey, albeit having to “reuse” parts of the same route.
If we attach one train-length staging cassette to the layout at the top left corner of the plan, the opportunities for operation increase- but oddly, the reverse loop move does not involve backing now. It comes during the forward departure from CC. The train leaves forward from the depot track, runs counterclockwise half the oval, then through bthe reverse loop to change to a clockwise direction, so it can run into the staging cassette at the top left of the plan. The passenger train has then departed and “gone somewhere.” The entire cassette can be turned to turn the train when it is time to return. On the inbound trip, the train runs counterclockwise around the oval until it passes the switch to the depot spur. Then the train backs, coach(es) first, to the depot. It does not use a reverse loop or wye. However, IT MAKES EXACTLY THE SAME NUMBER OF MOVES, STOPS AND DIRECTION CHANGES as if it had used a wye to make the backing movement into the station.
(Incidentally, the reason for the change of direction when a MoPac passenger train departs is that “away from town” is counterclockwise from the depot, but “away from town” is clockwise into the staging cassette. And what was the reason for THAT? I wanted a passenger spur on the “top” of the drawing (as drawn on a page), the north side of the scene. Also I wanted the depot on the top (north) side of the spur, and the spur on the outside/ top/ north side of the continuous route track. I got all of these, but it used up most of the length of the 9 foot table. Some of my analysis in laying out the depot spur.
This last arrangement, placing the turnout into the depot track into the end turnback curves maximizes the passenger train length, but it takes away the ability to make a minimal-space turn to carry an off-the-table connecting track toward the top (as was done with the Tex Mex connection at the bottom of the plan). An off-the-layout connection toward the top was cut into the very end of the end curve, at only a small cost in extra width of the track arrangement. However, the cost was too much to allow the same arrangement for the Tex Mex connection at the bottom. The makes both the MoPac and TexMex connections into facing point movements for clockwise trains. This has some implications, both favorable and unfavorable, for how the layout is run when we develop these connections with staging yards, staging cassettes or more.
I found working on this trackplan showed quite a range of possible operations, and a number of lessons. I will try to add more later. Meanwhile, I welcome more comment like that from Paulus Jas.