What kind of layout do you have?

Even my HiRail is proto-freelanced.

My outdoor railway is based upon a depression era merger. Works for me. I ain't stuck at 3:53 PM on Friday, June 23rd 1956 on Abilene.

 

Karankawa Terminal District of the Santa Vaca and Santa Fe Rwy. MY version of the Santa Fe in Galveston, Texas ca 1956, twisting the geography around just enough to include some of my favorite sites in Galveston that were a couple miles distant from the tracks.

 

Don't take that personal. I posted 1956 before you did...probably by nano seconds!
Dave

 

Mine is a protolance what if. UP's purchase of the SP is challenged and they are forced to divest parts. My railroad consists of a transcon. Former rock, former drgw and former WP plus assorted shortlines. Including corp and PNWR. It's really just a justification for running modern class one trains with freelance power.

 

I had to make a choice here, and came down on freelanced. I am somewhat protolance, but it still is more freelanced than now. I took my home town and a rail line down to a small town in southern Indiana called Westport and made it more prosperous. Ah, well...

 

I am modeling the Rio Grande's La Veta Pass Route between Pueblo and Crede, but compressing 250 miles into it about 5 scale miles, however it is as prototypical as I can make it, so I voted that way. Good question for a survey!!!

 

Not modeling a specific road but an area that saw a lot of varied roads over the years. Modeling a logging operation with major lines running main line thru the area allows me to have many different fallen flags but yet be current wth the WWII era - transition period .Does that make sense ?

 

As I said on Mark's thread...My concept is quite clear, at least to me. I model northern New England scenes reminiscent of my youth: towns, woods, farms, factories, etc. Through them, I run B&M locomotives, both steam and first (and a few second) generation Minute Man diesels, though not necessarily true to numbering or type. For instance B&M never owned an RS-1, but I have two 20 year old Atlas products that run well and are painted Minute Man scheme.
Besides it's MY railroad and I do as I darn well please...so there.

 

My Westville and Woodbury modules of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines are accurate for the early 1950s (with a lot of stand-in buildings for the time being). The Camden Pavonia yard, Schuylkill River and 30th street station scenes are proto-ish only.

 

My dad started a layout some months back, and I decided to make him a few simple timber items I could mail him, and of course I got the MRR bug and decided to start my own layout a month or so ago. At this point I have a 4'x8' test track that I secured using a Binford T-5000 temporary track attachment device. 5/16" staples hold well and can be easily pried off with no damage to the track. By holding the T-5000 against the inside of the rail I can shoot a staple cleanly between the ties. This is allowing me to test out things I want on my permanent layout. This is out in our new addition, which is being finished at the same time as the room earmarked for my layout. The layout room should be ready in about a month. The de-shelled diesels you can see are going to become "Climax" type Sn42 critters.




Having a lot of fun,
Stoker

P.S. The Plwood Pacific Railway in Sn42 pictured here is completely freelanced.....

 

Freelanced

My freelanced Logan Valley is set in 1957. It is a branch/bridge line that connects with the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road. With my available spece, modeling even part of a subdivision of either railroad would be difficult. Connecting with these railroads will allow me to power and equipment from both railroads. The layout is definitely a switching layout. I only have 4 towns on the layout, but the industries in these towns are intertwined with each other. Cattle pens provide livestock for a meat packing palnt, which in turn provides traffic to connecting railroads. Grain elevators provive grain to a mill which provides hopper traffic going outbound. A small logging spur provides logs to a lumer mill, which in turn supplies towns on the layout with lumber, plus more outbound traffic. Inbound freight cars supply good to freight stations which were the main way of getting goods into smaller towns back in that era.

A railroad need a reason to exist, and I am trying to provide the reason for its existance.

 

Prototype. The 65 mile UP helper district between Ogden, UT and Wahsatch, UT. Facilities, signalling, track is set in late Spring 1951. Everything else is set from the late 40's through 1956 (trains, engines, rolling stock, vehicles, billboards etc.).

I build modularly so I can work on a particular section or two of my layout, run trains and have fun until I get a layout room/building big enough for the final app. 35'X35' I need for the whole thing.

It's composed of a series of Layout Design Elements, that resemble the prototype scenes as closely as I can do them in a series of 3'X6' modules, with most LDE's being at least 18 feet long.

I only lack a few engines that were run on this stretch, in this era. Athearn has blessed me with excellent running and sounding Union Pacific Big Boys, and Challengers. I've collected many brass locomotives over the years, such as my brass FEF-3's and 2's, my USRA UP light MacArthurs (Mikes), Harriman Consolidateds, UP GP-9 "B" Units.

Kato, IMR, LifeLike and Atlas continue to release engines and cars that exactly fit my era, such as GP-7's and 9's, EMD E8/9's, PA/PB's, NW2's, F3/7 A&B's. IMR FP-7's, and LifeLike ALCO FA/FB's.

Engines I need and don't have yet for my era include TTT 2-10-2's, 9000 Class three-cylinder 4-12-2's, Bullmooses, and both "Baby" and "Veranda" turbines...all of which are "in the works" and will be running on the layout sometime next year I hope.

When my layout is finished, I'll run many of the 25+ passenger trains that went through Weber and Echo Canyons, many of the Big Boy-pulled freights, two daily Locals (Evanston $ Park City) and include helper operations with all non-Big Boy pulled freights with 3700 Class oil-fired Challenges and TTT 2-10-2's pushing every through freight that wasn't being pulled bya a Big Boy.

I'm planning a 30' LDE of Ogden, which will include the UP and SP roundhouses and turntables, Union Station and the passenger tracks, the Less Than Car Load facilities just north of the Station, the Swift meat packing plant and stockyards, and the huge PFE icing platform on the West side of the yard. Should be fun, and will all be tied together with a double-ended staging yard to the north/west of Ogden and directly east of Wahsatch to allow both roundy-round and point to point operation depending on my mood. Ogden will also allow appearance by SP, WP and D&RGW trains and engines, although not a lot of running of them.

Here's one complete scene that I'm presently in the process of rebuilding. This is the Wihemina Pass/Devils Slide LDE, and this version does not exist any longer, but will be re-created in the next year or so. What you see is the Weber River running to the left of the trackage, the red sandstone cliffs of Wilhemina Pass (including a small, natural bridge known as Devils Looking Glass), and the 1000 Mile Tree Monument alongside the mainlines.


Here's Echo Junction and the coaling tower, the diverging Park City Branch, and the Echo Station taken from the sandstone cliffs looming over the town:


Here's Echo Curve with the Echo Coaling Tower just around the corner to the West and Wahsatch and Laramie to the East:


Here's some Big Boy and Challenger power parked unprototypically in the Echo Yard:


Most of my track plans for the areas I'm building are 100% to about 90% like the prototype except for length, and are taken from Valuation Maps I've acquired for this location. As an example, here's a prototype shot taken of Echo from the cliffs around 1950. Compare it to my shot of this same scene above:


Prototype modeling is a lot of fun for me, and maybe I'll get this mostly finished sometime in the next five to ten years!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

 

Well finally a start - a very short, halting start to "Coosawhatchie V.2." All of my engines and ~200 freight cars were boxed up last December. Now the "Boy Wonder" (me) has to unbox and restack them all. Just two wee small problems; I use AAR Car Service Rules on my glorified switching layout - that means the cars are sorted out geographically and 2; I'm recovering from the "year of medicine" (2012) and while the spirit is there - the stamina isn't yet.

That means 15 - 30 minutes of work, followed immediately by a 10 - 15 minute rest period. Healing is happening but millimeter by millimeter. Oh well, why worry - I got the rest of this century, right?