Introduce Your Model Railroad With One Post!

The Colonel (Paul) posted that he is transitioning from N scale to HO scale. I did the same about three years ago. Paul is trying to incite more discussion in the HO forum. So here's my idea... introduce your model railroad in one post, including only one photo! Link to your railroad's home page if there is one. I'll go first...

I model the Pennsy per the prototype circa 1950s at Lewistown, Pennsylvania. The four track main line is featured, but mostly as a vignette as it passes the Lewistown Junction yard. This yard is not a main line classification yard (like Enola or Altoona), but rather a junction yard with two Pennsy branches, the Selinsgrove Secondary and the Milroy Secondary. I run Digitrax DCC with JMRI.

Construction started in 2010. The overall room is 32' by 32', with lots of obstacles for challenges. The first areas are just now becoming operable. I'm located between Harrisburg and York, Pa., and will welcome operators in a few months.

Web site: http://jbritton.pennsyrr.com



Yeagertown... the first town up and running. Large version: http://photos.pennsyrr.com/displayimage.php?pid=3301&fullsize=1

 

In N scale, I model the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines through Westville and Woodbury, NJ (the towns in which I grew up). The track plan pretty much duplicates the area in the early 1950s. (When Woodbury had 3 mainline tracks as opposed to today's one and Westville had 6 spurs (vs. 1)).

The loft is 12'x17' and phase 3 construction is under way (2 Philadelphia mini scenes and something standing in for the Camden, NJ Pavonia yards).

 

My layout is an L-shaped layout in a spare bedroom, which is approximately 12 feet by 12 feet. The layout itself is about two feet wide. Currently it is nearing the second phase of construction, which is the track work. The layout is built in three sections which are designed to be unbolted and moved. While I do not intend to take it to shows or anything, it will probably be necessary to move it at some point, since I currently live in an apartment.

I intend for the railroad to be a switching layout. It is situated on a junction, where an industrial branch meets the main line. The main line, which runs down one leg of the layout, is two tracks. There are a couple of industries off of the main line, a grain elevator off the south track and a loading ramp and warehouse off the north track. Also along the south track is a passenger depot. At the junction with the industrial branch, there is a crossover and a switch for the branch down the other leg of the layout. The interlocking will be protected by signals, and CTC will be in effect on both main tracks. I will be using JMRI to control the signals and show block occupancy. I am still open to suggestions for what electronics to use, but I do know that I want a current sensing detection system.

On the other leg of the railroad is the industrial branch. The biggest industry there is a car shop facility. In the story behind this railroad, the shop once belonged to a predecessor railroad, but since big mergers happened, it has been privately owned, and they specialize in freight car maintenance, cleaning, and overhauls. The shop will have two stub end tracks that end in the shop building, and two through tracks, one inside the shop building and one that passes outside. The two through tracks will actually go on a shelf around to a third wall of the room, where I have my workbench. Down the branch from the shop will be an oil unloading facility. This will be a two track industry, with enough space to unload about four tank cars at a time. The car shop will have its own means to move cars around once in its facility, but the oil unloading facility will rely on the railroad for the switching of cars. Further down the branch, I still have some space where I would like to put an industry, but have not decided what to put there. I will have a siding off the branch main, and any additional industry would have to use or be off of that siding. The space is about a foot wide and four feet long. I need to start looking through some catalogs for something that looks interesting.

The passenger carrier on my railroad is Amtrak, which really only means anything at the depot. Amtrak would never have any reason to send a train down the branch line, so they would only exist for the 12 feet of main line I have modeled. The freight carrier is BNSF Railway, which would run through freights on the main line, and provide a local switching job for the industrial branch. Few, if any, through freight trains would run down the branch, unless it was being used as a detour for something.

I have not yet decided on how I will create switch lists or work orders yet. Most of the switching would be setting cars up for a through train to pick up, or delivering cars dropped off by a through train. There is a siding near the dock track which is where through trains will pick up from and drop off to the local, which will switch the industries. I may use car cards or a similar system, but I have also entertained the idea of some sort of computer based car tracking program. I decided on signals and CTC for the main tracks mostly because I wanted to experiment with JMRI and the associated electronics on a small scale before trying to implement them on a larger future layout. Also, I really like how signals look, and what they add to a scene, but I want them to work properly if I have them. The branch line will be restricted limits, so trains will operate without a dispatcher, allowing the local to switch as needed on the branch, without having to talk to a dispatcher (whether real or simulated) constantly. They layout is designed for operation by one person, or two at the most, since it is a small room.

Currently I am nearing the completion of my track. I have a few switches to assemble, and then I can put down all the industry tracks on the branch. The main tracks and industries off of them are all completed and operational.

 

I am between layouts, but have the benchwork, including a single turn helix 6' in diameter, the tracks, and part of the scenery done...mostly around a double-track truss bridge and a nearby lift-off mountain. The layout is around the walls on 1X4 framing and about 3' deep. The footprint in the loft, above the garage out-bulding, is approximately 11' X 21'. There will be a modest sized yard and engine servicing facility. The layout will have a double main, a turning scissored-type wye, and the tail of the wye doubles, inside the large mountain covering the helix, as the descending ramp to under-layout staging. The layout is generic, some of this, some of that, with photographic blown-up backdrop that I haven't really considered how to achieve to date...but I only have to reach over shallowish modules to afix the panels to the walls when I am ready. So, in a nutshell, a double-mained freelance with two large mountains, both of which will have their tops removable, a helix, and a yard. The industries will be a coal mine and a lumber yard/sawmill, probably one other small business as yet to be determined.

Here are some photos:

First, the out-building, loft at the top (hipped roof meaning canted inner walls and ceiling, unfortunately, but the space is too precious to give up)



Next, the yard module is substantial, and already inplace at right. At left middlle-ground is the framing and main surface for the helix.



Here is the the helix. The lower track is the descent to the staging, the ramp continuing toward the door of the loft, across the door by lift-out bridge, and to the staging on the other side of the room suspended under the yard/servicing large module.



This image shows the scissored wye. It is 'east' of the helix, right at its foot.



Another view of the helix, looking 'west', and now showing three tunnel portals. You are looking across the wye, flat in the middle-ground. The middle portal, to the left, is the other one that allows completion of the wye turns, and its turnout will be remotely operated in the helix, down the track from the left-most portal which has the two mains running into it and on up the helix from there. The turnout is a Peco Streamline Code 83 #6 operated by the throttle cable for a lawn-mower. Some of you may wince, but I have actuated that cable many times and it works very positively and reliably....so far. In any event, if I ever have to replace the turnout, it will be a process of sliding under the helix with a head lamp or ready-light, loosening ballast I like to place around track to keep it from squirming by wettting it (I only use carpenter glue, so it softens in seconds...literally), sliding back joiners, and lifting it out.



This view is looking west, through the generous double-wide portal at the base of the lift-off mountan I just finished covering in ground goop and ground foam...seen in a photo to come. The camera is beside the large module housing the yard, station, and servicing. You can see the mains rise at the base of an eventual 2.4% grade that sweeps left inside the mountain, emerges, and crosses the double-wide truss bridge an on up into the back side of the large helix mountain.



Here is a view of the mountain just imagined in the previous shot. The wide portal is at the right, but hidden. Note the shaped 1/2" ply ribs glued onto a base frame of 1X2 spruce. Aluminium window screen covers the top side of the ribs, and I now have that covered with ground goop.



I took this photo last weekend. I have gone on and ground-gooped the entire structure to the back of the helix, which is just out of sight at left in this image...but you can see where the tracks lead.



I had some family troubles, health related, much of last year, and I was the king-pin who had to run the show while two people convalesced, one for physical reasons and another for mental health reasons. Needless to say, I lost all interest in the layout from May until just two weeks ago. Now, with spring here, buds splitting and leaves erupting, I have cut the lawn once already and had to rake tons of clippings due to the shear volume and length, and even restored water to the yard and outdoors shower...the first of which I had two days ago...YAY!!

I will post more photos as developments continue.

 

Crandell, What is the recipe for your ground goop? Jim

 

I don't post photos very often but this is fairly representative of my HO layout. It is call the Pinnacle Creek Mining & Timber Co. It is set in 1931 on the Alaskan Pan Handle. Everything comes in by barge. Mining is the thing. No autos, just trains and shanks mare for mobility. Jim

 

I have to fess up, for a 32x32' layout, the photo shows the only foot that is near fully scenic'd!

I have a larger area getting close, though.

 

Colonel, that's one of the nicer switching layouts I have seen. Well done!

 

Paul,

With all the engines you will acquire you may have to use the other two walls for a continuous running loop if, for no other reason, to exercise all that horsepower you will have.

 

HO, sorry to be so long in replying. The recipe is one shared with the MRR world by Joe Fugate, the co-owner/editor of Model Railroad Hobbyist e-magazine. You need fine vermiculite to start with, bags and bags of it, depending on the area to be covered. But the recipe is four parts fine-ground vermiculite to two parts plaster of Paris and one part portland cement. I also add masonry dyes because it otherwise looks greyish or much to bright/white. I use a powdered dye, just a pinch of two (brown and 'mesa', an ochre colour). I find it works well with the aluminum window screen, but the screen must be supported below it or it will sag under the weight across spans wider than about 8".

 

Below is the link to the history (Freelanced history) of how this railroad came about and what I am trying to accomplish with the layout.

http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?149953-The-Logan-Valley