Howdy friends. I was a member here back in the early 2000's and at the time was working on a fictitious "BNSF Whitehead Sub" layout. My first kid came along and I decided I didn't have the time or the money to really do model railroading the way I wanted to (go big or go home). I'm 47 now and probably a few years away from doing a BIG layout like I'd like to do, but I'd like to get back into the hobby and am trying to decide what I want to model. Previously, I was just sort of making up a modern era location and chose to run with BNSF. When I do this again I'd like to model something more realistic. I wanted to pick your brains on how YOU selected what to model and maybe get input to help me decide. Growing up (80's & 90's) this red UP line (circled) ran through my little town and I have fond memories of watching the trains roll by, so this little stretch is interesting to me. Back then it was SP so I saw lots of those dirty black SP units rolling down the tracks. Most of my adult life, however, has been in Georgetown. As you can see below, the Georgetown area offers lots of opportunity for modeling BNSF (blue), UP (red), and a few smaller local railroads (black). But with all that being said, I think it could also be cool to model the beautiful and scenic Big Bend area of Texas, which is predominately UP (red). And last but certainly not least, I've also always had a fondness for west Texas and the Panhandle, which also offers BNSF (blue), UP (red), and various other railroads (black). Amtrak also runs on all of these routes, I believe, so that opens up some passenger train potential as well. I do know that I want to model the modern era (which to me would be 1980 up to now). If I could do something that includes both BNSF and UP (or the older Santa Fe or Southern Pacific) that would be pretty cool, as I'm partial to all of those. I'm also open to concentrating on BNSF/SF or UP/SP though. How did the rest of you decide what you wanted to model and where? Any other Texas modelers here? If so, I'm curious about what you're modeling as well. Thanks for your help!
This area around Sweetwater could provide some interesting traffic. Not only do BNSF and UP cross paths here, but there are also some railroading opportunities for TXOR (Texas & Oklahoma Railroad), SSC (Southern Switching Company), and BSR (Big Spring Rail System).
Probably first up is pick an era........sounds like you already did that. I'm doing transition era........I like the variety of Locos and rolling stock, and I can run both steam and diesel. Next up, at least for me was an area. The area will help dictate scenery, and also a lot of your industries. I chose midwest, but not a specific location......I'm freelancing. I'm going down memory lane for a lot of my industries. When I was growing up, my hometown had the second largest stockyard in the world, and a lot of meat packing plants......so those are appearing on the layout. Not exact replicas since they would take up too much space, but representations. A lot of my buildings have signs for businesses I remember growing up. And then I added industries that would be appropriate for my midwest theme.......grain elevators, lumber yards, fuel dealers, farm equipment dealers, ect. Then I am adding all the generic buildings........houses, gas stations, restaurants, stores, ect. My hometown was served by Milwaukee Road, CNW, Illinois Central, CB&Q, and Great Northern..........The Milwaukee Road shops and yard were a few blocks from my parents house, so that's what I remember most, so that's what I picked to model. But I have a small interchange yard with CNW and a siding that interchanges with either GN or IC (engine and cars sit in a tunnel and push cars out for pick up, or pick up cars dropped off).
If I were to expand on the Sweetwater area above, it would include some great railroading opportunities from Fort Worth to El Paso on the UP Line and from Temple to beyond Lubbock for the BNSF line (plus potential for the smaller railroads mentioned above). From Google maps it appears there's a small interchange yard in Sweetwater where the two Class 1's cross paths. Could keep things pretty interesting.
Yes, I've settled on the era. From a location standpoint, I'm a born and raised Texan so the vast majority of railroading I've seen in my life was here in Texas. So, I'll probably stick to my home state. The expanded view of the Sweetwater area is looking pretty interesting to me right now. It provides a lot of opportunity for various railroads and industry over a broad area and it lets me run the two railroads I'm most interested in and not just be limited to one. I'd have to do "representative" industry like you're doing, just because it's such a large area to model.
Taking it a step further as I narrow this down. I'm thinking I could model BNSF from the Temple Yard to the Lubbock Yard and model UP from the Davidson Yard (Fort Worth) to the TXN exchange in Monahans. I could make these point to point with hidden loops at each end for continuous running if desired. I think I've answered a lot of my own questions here so I'll probably move this to the Layout Design forum.
I couldn't keep up with the maps but maybe you are looking for a certain type of scenery? My current layout had to have room for mountains and bridges. Plus: A loop for continuous running A yard A switching area. The main line is only a 20' loop but it fits the desires.
I grew up too late to see my favorite railroad in its heyday. Long story short, I discovered and grew to love the ex-D&RGW Moffat Tunnel route long into the UP era. The large braces of Tunnel Motors and GP40s were long gone and replaced by the unending sea of thrashed Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray. The timelessness of the route is what captivated me. Scenes photographed in the 1940s are nearly identical (minus tree growth) to scenes captured 40-50 years later. No urban sprawl, no development to spoil the untouched wilderness, no trace of human disruption save for the trains. It's incredibly remote, mostly inaccessible, and dramatically scenic. The specific section I model is a 12 mile segment of 27 Tunnels and 3 sidings. The sidings are the only access points, but undeterred, I explored 95% of the area and documented it long before the PTC era brought forests of annoying poles, but long after the 1940s searchlight signals fell. I loved the tenaciousness and grit the little regional railroad exhibited, fighting for and winning key traffic from UP and the burgeoning BN system. The scrappy little road could hold its own, operating crack freights at beyond passenger train schedules on time sensitive tonnage, as well as a stranglehold on central Colorado coal, accumulating a massive fleet of coal cars and operating numerous public utility trains as well. Coal was the lifeblood of the Moffat. Situated on the toughest and steepest mainlines in the Rockies, the D&RGW fought hard to compete with the its larger competitors, and did so very well. So well in fact that it was merged with SP, and later assimilated in the UP system. I model the region I want, in an era I missed out on. I cut off my era at 1983, to retain the Rio Grande Zephyr (an Amtrak holdout until a massive landslide sealed its doom 13 years after Amtrak began), when helpers were manned, before graffiti, DPUs & remote control, PSR monsters and the decline of coal, and when skill and experience at the throttle safely brought 100 car trains down 2 or 3% grades without fanfare. All this to say, find what you love most about your favorite route, select your favorite era, and recreate it in the way that makes you smile. In this hobby, rule number one is "it's your railroad, run it how you want"... When in doubt, refer to rule #1!
I did what you mention.........I consider my layout a switching layout, but I have a hidden staging yard (still to be built) to supply trains/cars to the main yard. The "main" track is double track, but there's a hidden return track to allow continuous running. The staging yard also feeds into the main layout thru a Wye, so I can route trains from staging to come in to the yard from either direction.
I live in Sugar Land, Texas so decided to model the local railroads during the transition era. The Texas & New Orleans (SP) ran through town on the Sunset Route and the International, Great Northern (MP) came up from the south to service the sugar refinery and a chemical plant. The Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe (ATSF) line from Galveston was just a few miles west in Richmond and Rosenberg. I found a lot of excellent areal photos of the area from the early 1950, so used them quite a bit.
Yep. Final decisions are important. My current module (one foot by three feet) is Murphysboro, Illinois. The next main module of the same size will be Union City, Tennessee. I chose these locations because they had a heavy GM&O presence. Also, they are linear relatively speaking. Both have a North-South orientation. One interchanges with the IC and the other with the NC&StL. Both are small towns. I also model steam to diesel era. I remember a magazine contributor who developed a list of "givens and druthers". Seems to help with planning.
I'm not in Texas, although I briefly lived in west Texas.... For me it was the area where I grew up. The pre-mega-merger era and an intense dislike of what came afterward. Family and friends connected to a certain railroad. The wonderful variety of scenery. Mountains. Valleys. Rivers. Ocean inlets. Forests. Plains. So many possibilities!
Made my decision 35 years ago. I grew up in a small town in Southern Virginia. Always loved trains. Our only RR in town was a Class III road, The Atlantic and Danville, later the NF&D. However, I used to travel w/ my father on business in the summers up to White Sulphur Springs, WV. There I saw the Class 1 Chesapeake and Ohio and it made a huge impression on me. As I got older and out on my own, I traveled in the Blue Ridge doing thissa and thatta and also spent a lot of time watching and observing the C&O. Fast forward to my first layout: I made a conscious decision to model the C&O and I wanted to get my layout up and going. I knew if I modeled a very specific area of the C&O, I would have to spend much time A; Researching and B; building structures, etc for that specific area. Since I lived in the DC area at the time, I knew I couldn't spend that much time researching plus getting something built, especially with a young family. So I decided to come up w/ my own division. Branches off between Staunton and Charlottesville, up to Highland County, Va, into WV and up to Morgantown. Service from there is over NYC tracks from Morgantown into Pittsburgh which gives Pittsburgh a more direct route to the Newport News Harbor over the C&O line direct to Newport News. So for my buildings, etc., I can do just about anything I want so long as it fits the transition era. For trackside structure and signals, as well as motive power/equipment, it follows strict C&O Standards similar to what would be found on the Allegheny Division.
When I was a kid, I took all I could get. When I got back into the hobby in 2008, after a 30-year hiatus, it was love at first sight for an Athearn SD40-2 in CN colors at an Ottawa club's flea market. That's when I decided to model CN. At the same event, I bought a GP7 in CN's 1950's colors. Basically, it's CN from the transition era (preferred) through the 1960s and early 1970s. The 1950s were an interesting time with a lot of variety in engines and rolling stock. The rest is drawing a lot of track plans, and finally in 2017, throwing all those plans out and using inspiration to build a layout that I still have now, and it keeps me busy (good busy ).
