The Southern California Traction Club has a couple of very nice modular layouts that show up often at various shows I've attended. The cars are all powered by overhead catenary.
I know I've come to the party late, but I'd still like to put in a few words about my interest in traction. I love both trolley and interurban. I am a traction fanatic. Always have been. Unfortunately, I am just a collector of brass traction models in HO and 'O' scales. I've never built a layout. It's been that way for years. I keep telling myself I'll get around to designing and building a traction layout someday. But, I wouldn't know where to start...there are no model railroad clubs nearby to join. So, knowledge and skills that are required to build a layout are lacking. I also don't have space for a layout. But, I'm going to keep my hopes up, because I love model railroading and I want to model the Pacific Electric RY and the CNS&M RR. Right now, I'm just a collector.
Ok, need ideas to "tractionize" my layout I bought. Here is an birds eye view. My thoughts are to put a corn field in the tan area on each side of the curved track on the right side, a small farming community along the road(which I might backdate to more of a dirt road). But I need ideas for the 2 spur tracks. if I could find a single track car barn that looked more interurban and less like an steam loco engine house, that would be my choice there. But the rear spur track(one with track in pavement) is in question. Right now it has one of the Walthers lumber series buildings on it that the track passes thru the middle for loading dry cut lumber. So that really doesn't fit on a Indiana area traction line. One of Alpine Scale Models substations to put along the track somewhere. Suydam did make a carbarn, but its larger 2 track one. Mike the Aspie
Silly NT's, I have Asperger's Syndrome
I will keep posting updates as I go. I got my first traction book, the Traction Guidebook published by Kalmbach. With the sale of my last high doller logging engine, I bought another Suydam powered Niles car, this time combine. And I got the book The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Will get me some good reading over the holidays. Planning to order the rest of my line poles and some wire as well. Mike the Aspie
Sir MadogFor simple straight and curved track, Rail N Scale offers a 3D printed tool, which is basically a roller with an imprinted sett structure. All you have to do is fill the track with modeling clay and roll this tool over it to have a perfect looking track!
That is cool! like stamped concrete, in miniature.
Mike.
My You Tube
Keep us posted oh the progress you make, Mike! Curious minds want to know...
All that talk about traction has wet my appetite, but unfortunately, I´ll have to stay hungry.
Proto 87 is really cool, but I don't have the patience to deal with converting everything over, espically the old Suydam car. The track is nicely done on my layout, with only the one front bridge needing replaced. I will concentrate on getting the poles up and strung with wire. Going to put an order in to Jason's Brass poles as he reproduces the Suydam style poles that I have already and has the trolley wire.
Boston still has its trolley system. I remember riding PCC cars when I went to college, but of course they've all been retired now and more modern cars run in their place. They never made the mistake that other cities did of shutting down the system and ripping up the the track for highways, so we still have our "quaint" traction system. The streetcars run underground in the heart of the city, but rise to the surface outside.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
This is a short section of Proto 87 girder rail trackage with their cobblestone plastic sheets, both the original tan color and painted up.
I installed this for my carfloat terminal and I don't run my trolleys on it. It's a challenge to get it to work well. This is not quite done here. You can see some gaps where I have not glued the cobblestone sheet down yet.
The girder rail sections are only about 3 inches long, are fixed-radius and are pretty tricky to align and power. There are no rail joiners, just a thin piece of wire between sections. They need to be soldered and glued to the base. It's really a form of hand-laying and it takes some trial-and-error experimentation to develop a technique that works.
Here's a better view of the cobbles.
This, once again, is the Proto 87 sheet. I first sprayed it with a light gray primer, and then did a wash of black acrylic craft paint. Finally, I went over it with light sandpaper to remove some of the darker paint in an uneven way to get the mottled stone look I was looking for.
The cobblestone sheets are very thin. I found it easiest to cut them with a utility knife. All of my girder rail is 18-inch radius. I found using the edges of my 18-inch Ribbon Rail gauge to align the track and mark the cobble sheets for cutting to be invaluable in getting both steps right.
Some more interesting Internet finds for those with a love for traction modeling!
Michal Hübel is a small Czech business manufacturing HO scale models of the Inekon streetcars of Portland, Seattle and Washington DC. These are handcrafted brass models, still at an affordable price at € 200 net (add duty and shipping).
Michal Hübel
Streetcars are still going strong in most cities in Germany. After a period of neglect and closures in the 1970s, city planners have re-discovered the benefits of rail transport in the 1980s, which saw big investments flowing into the modernization of the remaining networks. Certainly one of the best networks worldwide can be found in and around the city of Karlsruhe, were streetcars have taken the role of interurbans, changing into streetcars once the city limits are reached, only to turn into a real railroad when leaving town again. A little further north, you can travel by streetcar through the entire Ruhr area, Germany´s most populated region with more than 17 million folks living in the metropolitan regio, with just one ticket! Sadly, my hometown Hamburg closed the last streetcar line in 1978, but has been making plans to revive it since the early 1990s. I don´t think I will that see in my lifetime!
Inspite of the majority of people in my country being in daily touch with streetcars, traction modeling is a small niche. There are a few manstream manufacturers offering traction models, but the brunt is made by small business, running limited editions, some of them beyond belief when it comes to pricing!
pretty cool Ulrich! Thats a neat idea for quick street trackage without some of the headache of Orr track. The Tilage set up is probably the best one going for HO scale street traction as it has the points and junctions that make that type of modeling unique and normaly much more difficult with lots of track assembly/soldering. I suspect if I had been exposed to the city scene more as a child, I would be more inclined to model it. But I grew up on the edge of a small city, more rural that city where I grew up. I walked the abandon right of way that ran along side the NKP IMC district. Saw the old concrete bridge supports, even a few ties and ballest remain in one area. So the thought of the quiet of the summer country side, interrupted by the ding of the gong bell and the noise of electric traction motors as the car makes a stop, then returning to the quiet sounds as the car departs is what brings a smile to my face. While only in my imagination, I am much to young to have seen it first hand, its fun to dream what it was like. The sounds come from memories riding the old North Shore coach that used to run at that museum in Noblesville. Its really a crying shame these lines didn't survive into todays world. Talk about clean transportation, much less polution and many lines were quite fast once out in the countryside. Very little noise to annoy people as the car went by. Anybody got someone that can paint brass interurbans? Need to get mine painted and I want it done really nicely. Mike the Aspie
Aside from the fiddly work of installing the catenary, one of the major obstacles in modelking urban traction is modeling good looking street track.
For simple straight and curved track, Rail N Scale offers a 3D printed tool, which is basically a roller with an imprinted sett structure. All you have to do is fill the track with modeling clay and roll this tool over it to have a perfect looking track!
Take a look here!
Rail N Scale is a Dutch company.
Paul3I'm more of a mainline electrification fan, but I like trolleys just fine.
I'm in the same league with Paul.
Growing up in Cleveland, where we still have overhead wire, lightrail, it was always a treat to ride into the Terminal Tower in one of the Shaker Rapid PCCs or the Cleveland Transit System's St. Louis or Airporter cars.
Of course, I have always been fascinated with the electrified Cleveland Union Terminal heavy electrics that ran from 1930 to 1952 before being sent to Grand Central territory.
My dad would take me to Trolleyville, an operating museum run by a guy named Brookins, that had about a mile of track or to the Worthington, Ohio Railway Museum which also featured some traction.
I rode the South Shore when they still had the big heavy cars, also some of the Chicago Elevated, too. Along with some of the NYC Subway and lots of the Pennsy, New Haven, New York Central and Long Island electrified lines, Toronto and San Francisco, too.
There was a little interurban line that ran to Chardon, Ohio called the Cleveland & Eastern. I can still walk parts of the right-of-way. Track was ripped up in 1921. Once, after a bridge burned down, wire was strung over about a 2 mile stretch of the B&O's Lake Branch and the cars occupied the same trackage as the B&O traffic.
I wish I would have made provisions for a city electric line on my layout like Garry has. Maybe on the next layout.
IMG_5616_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
Back in the late 1970s one of the Cleveland railroad clubs would charter this Kuhlman center-entrance car for the day. It was dirt cheap then!
http://www.trainweb.org/norm/roster/CRC_CD_05.htm
Usually the last run of the day into the Terminal, the motorman would let 'er rip on the private R-of-W segment just west of Shaker Square. I do believe we were rolling along at at least 60-per- for some of that run!
Heady Times
Regards, Ed
Correct Ulrich, but close enough as they have been so engrained from those ad's on TV. Espically to those that never have seen any other kind of traction. Not to mention you can still ride those cable cars
Sir Madog Track fiddler Saute and simmer the flavor can't be beat Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat..... You would see the little trolley booting around town with the ding ding of the bell. If my memory is not playing tricks on me, that was a cable car and not a trolley.
Track fiddler Saute and simmer the flavor can't be beat Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat..... You would see the little trolley booting around town with the ding ding of the bell.
If my memory is not playing tricks on me, that was a cable car and not a trolley.
Ulrich ... As info, San Francisco has both cable cars and trolley streetcars.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Track fiddlerSaute and simmer the flavor can't be beat Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat..... You would see the little trolley booting around town with the ding ding of the bell.
I am not very familiar with traction. I never lived around trolleys or everseen a real one. I would probably have more to say on the subject if I did.
From what I did see on TV or a movie. I always thought they had a lot of character. The wheels with clickity Clank around the sharp radius curves they could maneuver, and the ding ding of the Bell.
Honestly my most vivid memory of them was in the 70s. It went something like this.
Saute and simmer the flavor can't be beat Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat..... You would see the little trolley booting around town with the ding ding of the bell. I always got a kick out of that one.
Regards Track Fiddler
I have an older Bowser PCC car and a few body kits.Have alot of Orr track and some structures.Just waiting to start a layout hopefully early in the new year.
Does really suit the layout doesn't it? A single car carbarn would look good on that siding where that silver boxcar is parked. I am good at soldering, so once I have the supplies, it shouldnt be to hard(other than the backside of the layout) to string the wire. I did sell off my other geared logging engines, but I bought the other 2 F units for my A-B-A CZ power. Really only need the one car for my traction line. Still hope to find the unpowered matching trailer to my power car. Just none up for sale right now. I also still have my Sierra RR power in the form of #38 and #18 for when the steam mood strikes. Mike the Aspie
Looks nice, Mike - better than the logging theme you had planned for this layout!
Got my first 5 Suydam trolley poles today, have them installed on the layout, only one is really loose but I have a plan to deal with that. Wire height over the rail will be right around 2.75 inches once I put the hangers on the pole arm. Gonna need about 20 more of these poles to go all the way around the layout. Wish I was around and modeling traction back when one could just order these new from E. Suydam. Unfortunatly, Alpine Scale Models hasn't seen fit to make more of them since taking over the company. This is an action shot as the car is coming at us going around 30 smph.
dehusmanYou need to model the East Broad Top, when they resurrected the narrow guage line a trolly museum came in and used the right of way, so it has narrow guage steam and standard gauge trolleys.
.
What, Me model a prototype railroad... NEVER!
I hired a Giant Orc smash all prototype train cars that show up on my pike!
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I grew up in Brooklyn the closest I was to streetcars was seeing the paved over tracks in the street.One day while taking a Trailways bus up to Maine the bus got off the highway by the Riverside carbarns in Boston.It was loaded with Orange PCC cars.Been hooked ever since
tge
Narrow gauge (HOn30) and traction. Scratch built electric boxcab on a Kato N scale powered chassis.
New York, Vermont & Northern Rwy. - Route of the Black Diamonds
protolancer(at)kingstonemodelworks(dot)com
That is why only one of the 2 turnouts on my simple layout will have the wire"frog" so I can reverse down into the car barn. About our only hope for USA modern street cars is probably Kato. With them releasing thier Uni Tram street track starter set in a USA version of street markings. Thier Portram's are not to far off from what we see here in the USA. Its just all in N scale(primary modeling scale in Japan). I have seen some really nice layouts done with their trams. Combined with Kato's Diotown buildings and lighting, a very convincing modern downtown can be modeled.
I've always had an urge to build a traction layout. I love the work of Bob Hegge and other traction modelers of years past.
I just hope the urge never gets too strong!
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Mike,
Tillig track is well known in Europe, where model railroading is much wider spread as in the US. Regarding the availability of modern traction equipment, I have my doubts whether a US manufacturer or importer will take up the challenge. This will be most likely the domain of kitchen counter businesses offering 3D printed shells to fit over modified drives.
Regarding a working catenary for trolley pole operation - that´s quite a challenge! You need to have some kind of overhead switch at each turnout, which makes "stringing the wire" an awfully fiddly task!