What vision do you have for your layout?

[Trainman203]

In your mind's eye, what do you see your layout as?

Mine is a mid 1940's version of the MoPac branch back home. I saw it in steam as a youngster and have always loved that railroad, pulled up in 1986.  It had everything I like...... A relaxed schedule, older and lighter equipment, low maintenance of everything  which lent a beautiful patina to everything .  There were kerosene switch lanterns and marker lamps on wood cabooses up to the mid 60s, wood depots, and best of all, friendly crews who in the absence of supervisors let us kids have the run of the place and several cab rides.  We spent hours in the cabooses in the yard and in the engine house, no one cared.  

As an adult, and after thinking about it for many years,  I decided to model this line, but by then it was long gone.  I finally followed the ROW in 2006 and found almost nothing left, all reclaimed by jungle  growth.  Then, by accident, I found the Missouri Pacific Historical Society, populated with knowledgable people who had already done what I wanted to do.  Through the MPHS, I have acquired two vital books, both mid 1940 s MoPac engineering books.  One is a book of Gulf Coast Lines track profiles, which mile by mile details every mile of MoPac track between  Houston and Anchorage La.  It has rail weight, ballast type, presence of tie plates, industries served, mileages beteen stations, weight rating of bridges, and on and on.   The other is a book of MOW engineering plans for every building and trackside detail imaginable, from water tanks down to lineside signs and switchstand targets. I have historically accurate pea gravel ballast now because of these sources.  I'm getting ready to order the right  switchstand targets next.

Sanborn maps have the trackage plans in several towns shown over time. They reinforce my memory of what I saw so many years ago.

And, to keep this somewhat Bachmann-related, the Bach Man  has provided a series of steam locomotives thst actually reasonably resemble MP steam engines.

I have a couple of GP 9 s in 1950s blue and  grey that I keep for ceremonial purposes since I saw them and rode in them often, but they never run in regular service.

Any of you ever build resin or laser cut wood  freight car kits?  The MPHS has several accurate MP cars available and I'm getting ready to get them, to hold until I'm brave enough to build them.  

So, in the end, I have about everything I need to build a good model of this line.

To some, this sort of attention to history and accurate detail may seem arcane and boring, but I really like it, as the guys in the MPHS do.  The MPHS convention will begin Houston in October and I look forward to meeting my cyber friends in person.

Maybe this will explain my thinking to some folks here.

There, I've told what I do and why.  How about you?  What do you see your layout as?  What are you striving for?

[rogertra]

Trainman.

Sounds excellent.  If there were accurate models of Canadian steam I would have picked a similar line in Ontario or Quebec.

Heck, I would have done the same thing if there'd even been accurate Canadian diesels rather than just American version painted in Canada colours.

Well, you know what and why I model from previous posts.  
Cheers

Roger T.

[jward]

my current railroad loosely represents the area around Cumberland, md, a town that hosted 3 of my favourite railroads (pennsy, b&o and wm) but ideally it would be a freelanced mainline railroad running south out of that same area.

ahhh who am I kidding, they are all my favourite railroad except the ones with oval heralds and lightning stripes.

why a fictitious line? the railroads I like don't run through the areas I like with the locomotives I like. so I create a line that does.

[dasBM2-6-0]

My layout is a "composite" of locos and cars used by 2 lines that ran in my area - Boston & Maine and Suncook Valley RR.....
Switching is done with a GE 44 ton ("Phase 2", carrying the original Suncook Valley Number 3) and an RS-3 (B&M #1536, which originally ran around Concord, MA)..
My "excursion" loco is an Alco 2-6-0 steamer (B&M 1830)....I run this on a "seasonal" schedule, with a single B&M passenger car....
Three industries are "serviced" -- a waste-to-energy plant, a wood chip-powered generating station and "reserve" coal to another power-generating station.
Getting this to "come together" on a 4X8 layout is.....well.....interesting, to say the least!!:)

May your freight always roll smoothly....and ON TIME!!

[Len]

My railroad is the KL&B Eastern Lines Railroad Museum, situated on a spur of a 35 mile branch line abandoned by CSX. The branch also interchanged with the adjacent NS track.

A number of businesses on the branch depended on the railroads to receive raw materials and ship finished products out, and were understandably upset by the abondonment. A deal was worked out between the businesses, the museum, and the Class I's to continue those operations. The businesses purchased the branch right of way and track, and pay the museums operating and maintenance costs to use it's locomotives to haul cars to and from the interchange. They also help fund the weekend excursion runs, allowing the museum to keep ticket costs down.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday diesels make the interchange runs. Tuesday and Thursday steam gets the job. And Eastern Lines is defined as, "Anything East of the Continental Divide".

Len

[WoundedBear]

Cut and pasted from a previous thread on this same topic..............I hate typing

"Quick description.........a small fictional shortline on the BC-Alberta border in the Yellowhead Pass region, circa 1932. We run a few mines, a sawmill, a logging area, 2 small towns and a central yard. The layout room is roughly 12 X 22 and I have a 12 X 15 studio in the room next to it. Staging runs through an access hole in the wall and is in the studio room. Minimum radius is 18, but the small equipment I use looks fine. Max grade is 2.2% and there is provision for a continuous run route through staging, or it can be operated as a point to pointer.

The names are fictional as well.....the small town of Lye Flats is where Lye Flats Lumber Co has their mill. Main street consists of a store, fire hall, station, and other buildings. It leads up a road past some company houses to the largest mine on the layout. The centrally located Stihl Yards look after servicing and repairing all of the LS&D's equipment as well as doing work on the privately owned units of the mines and lumber company. The other town on the line is Djheet Valley with a number of various industries and a layover stock yard. There is a station here as well.

Down the line is the logging area and a wye, then on towards a few more mines and finally into staging. It's a single main with limited passing. At Stihl there is only a small 4 track stub yard. Big power is a Mantua 2-6-6-2....it brings the weekly freight drag into the area.  The workhorses of the fleet are three Bachmann 4-6-0's with the 52" drivers. They are responsible for passenger service and hauling the local freight.

The mines and sawmill run Shays and Climaxes. The mines have both 2 and 3 truck Climaxes, a 2 truck Climax will handle yard switching and Shays pulling Rivarossi log cars are everywhere. There is also a Concor Pierce Arrow Galloping Goose that hauls hot shot freight to the mines."

Revisions are being made constantly.......lol.


Sid

[electrical whiz kid]

SGT C.
AKA Rich
AKA president, chief cook and bottle washer of the Portsmouth Terminal and Hoosic Lines.
I run in a more or less straight path from Portsmouth NH, to Poughkeepsie, NY; with a branch to Boston, Portland, Me, Pittsfield, Ma, Rutland, Vt, and terminating in God knows where (ain;t gotten that fur, yet...)...
Circa 1930-55, the road sports mostly hand-me-down steam-but fixed up and spit and polish.  Min:  26-inch radius.  Design largely resembles the Roanoke Southern from MR 2011, may. 
RIch

[Trainman203]

If this was a previous topic, my apology, was not here at the time.  Great responses so far.

[electrical whiz kid]

Reference to Trainman;
If my contribution here has offended you or anyone, I retract it.  Sorry to have done so.
I will offer no more information/commentary here.
SGT C.

[Desertdweller]

My railroad is based in Denver and never leaves town!

The N-scale Denver Union Terminal Railroad is based on my impressions of Denver passenger railroading when I discovered it in the 1960's.  Much of the "glory days" had already passed, but enough remained to capture my imagination and interest.  I fudged the era slightly back to 1959.

Denver Union Station sits front and center.  Six platform tracks (five are run-through) extend toward the viewer. Two tracks that served the Moffat Road station (not modeled) act as storage tracks for trains laying over.  Finally, a double-track main line fronts the layout.

All passenger trains that served the terminal in the decade before AMTRAK are modeled.  ATSF; CBQ; C&S; DRGW; RI; and UP.  MP is there too, but by the time their trains reached Denver, they were running as DRGW trains.

This gives me a nice mix of transcon streamliners and heavyweight, secondary locals.  Mail and express business is there too, and have their own tracks alongside the terminal building.  The view the operator sees is roughly what one would see from the South Platte River.  Cherry Creek is modeled too, but as a wild river, not the concrete-lined ditch that tamed it.

I use a sequence operation based on the operating cycle of the real thing.  Twenty arrivals and twenty departures scheduled (plus extras, of course).  All trains that existed in the prototype.

I have lots of people on my layout.  It is fun to imagine myself among them.

Three engine terminals support this operation.  Pullman (UP); Rice (ATSF, CBQ, C&S); and Burnham (D&RGW).
Control system is DC, with Atlas selectors and an MRC 2800 Dual Pack.  This is fed through a Kato Sound Box sound system which provides both sounds and momentum.  Two Bachmann trainset power packs control the turntables.  Turnouts are powered by the Bachmann packs and old trainset power packs.

My railroad may not please the pickiest "experts", but it is good enough for me.  If I had more room, I would have used gentler switches and broader curves.  But it achieves its purpose for me.  It is my only attempt at modeling an urban railroad.  Lots of buildings.  I have tried to capture at least the flavor of 1960's Denver.

Les

[ebtnut]

This matter of what to do with your model railroad has been kicking around at least since Frank Ellison hit the press back in the early 1950's with his Delta Lines layout.  Back in those formative years much of the emphasis on layout planning was seeing how much track you could cram into a given space, sometimes referred to as the "spaghetti bowl" era.  Ellison's ideas on operation came out of the theater world, wherein each train would have a featured role during the session, whether it was the streamliner or the way freight. 

Most modelers of the time were happy just to get something built and running, motive power or rolling stock.  Then Whit Towers, John Allen and some others began asking the question, "what does my railroad do?"  Putting a train together, running it around the layout a few times, then going for coffee began to seem not quite enough.  You have a yard full of cars – shouldn't they be going somewhere?

Tony Koester, when he was editor of RMC, featured Alan McClleland's layout the V&O many times, espousing the idea of "beyond the benchwork".  The railroads are a part of a nation-wide system.  There is interchange, run-throughs, forwarded hotshots.  There were lineside industries that needed service too.  In the prototype world, sometimes those industries needed certain types of cars.  Operations should reflect this aspect of prototype railroading.

These principals applied to both free-lanced pikes as well as those based on a real railroad.  No one could successfully model the entire New York Central system, but you could do a good representation of a select portion, even it might just be from the Albany depot up West Albany hill. 
The parallel side of this, though, is that this is your hobby, your means of relaxation. 

There are many aspects that appeal to folks – some just like to build models, some do scenery, some just like to watch the trains run.  It's all valid as long as you are satisfied.  The great part of the hobby is that if you start to become dissatisfied, there are a lot more avenues to explore to keep that interest alive.

[rogertra]

This matter of what to do with your model railroad has been kicking around at least since Frank Ellison hit the press back in the early 1950's with his Delta Lines layout.  Back in those formative years much of the emphasis on layout planning was seeing how much track you could cram into a given space, sometimes referred to as the "spaghetti bowl" era.  Ellison's ideas on operation came out of the theater world, wherein each train would have a featured role during the session, whether it was the streamliner or the way freight. 

Most modelers of the time were happy just to get something built and running, motive power or rolling stock.  Then Whit Towers, John Allen and some others began asking the question, "what does my railroad do?"  Putting a train together, running it around the layout a few times, then going for coffee began to seem not quite enough.  You have a yard full of cars – shouldn't they be going somewhere?

Tony Koester, when he was editor of RMC, featured Alan McClleland's layout the V&O many times, espousing the idea of "beyond the benchwork".  The railroads are a part of a nation-wide system.  There is interchange, run-throughs, forwarded hotshots.  There were lineside industries that needed service too.  In the prototype world, sometimes those industries needed certain types of cars.  Operations should reflect this aspect of prototype railroading.

These principals applied to both free-lanced pikes as well as those based on a real railroad.  No one could successfully model the entire New York Central system, but you could do a good representation of a select portion, even it might just be from the Albany depot up West Albany hill. 
The parallel side of this, though, is that this is your hobby, your means of relaxation. 

There are many aspects that appeal to folks – some just like to build models, some do scenery, some just like to watch the trains run.  It's all valid as long as you are satisfied.  The great part of the hobby is that if you start to become dissatisfied, there are a lot more avenues to explore to keep that interest alive.

Very well put.

My learning model railroading started off in the UK where there is almost no such thing a freelancing in the sense of a made up railroad even though the stations and lines were usually imagineered as most people in the UK only had a spare room, if that for their model railway.  You can hardly model an actual location in a typical 10 x 10 or 12 x 12 spare bedroom.

However, prototypical operation has always been strong in the UK with most people operating their simple single track branch line, your typical UK model railway, from branch line terminal to staging yard on a timetable. 

However, it was really the V&O series in RMC that gave the biggest kick start to prototypical, beyond the basement, model railroading in North America.  I know I was heavily influence by those articles.  You can even emulate the V&O idea on a small 4 x 8, if it's properly designed for operation as many an article in magazines like 'Model Railroader' have shown in their 'project railroad' series, all of which are designed to look and operate as prototypically as possible given the space.

Cheers

Roger T.

[Desertdweller]

My initial "great inspiration" was John Allen's Gorre and Daphetid Railroad as featured in January 1969 MR.  This railroad would be considered a sort of caricature by today's "experts", but to me, it fairly blew me away.

John, a professional photographer, was very interested in realistic operations on his free-lanced model railroad set in Northern California.  It featured intense detailing and spectacular scenery.  It was definitely something to aspire to.  The article, as was later ones on the V&O, tracked the progress of a train around the railroad.

The V&O of Allen McCllenland was also a great inspiration as it appeared for several years in RMC.  I must admit I liked the earlier version of it better, with steam locomotives, first generation Diesels, and railroad-owned passenger trains.  Later versions featured closed stations and AMTRAK trains.

Frank Ellison was a little before my time, but I have read some of his writings.  His concept was that of a model railroad being a stage, and the trains as actors that came on and left.  I guess that is the general idea of my own model railroad.  Some trains are "prima donnas" (California Zephyr) and others are "understudies" (Billings Local).  By today's standards, both the G&D and Ellison's Delta Lines would be considered "spaghetti bowls" (maybe mine, too).  But that was the way things were built back then.  The V&O was more linear.

Ellison's railroad was built in O-scale, and his locomotives ran on outside third rail.  I don't know if it was AC or DC.  That was common in the 1940's. 

All these guys and more were inspiration to me and many others.  Others that come to mind are Whit Towers (Alturas and Lone Pine) and Eric Brooman (Utah Belt).  My railroad of 28 years, the West Central Nebraska, was inspired and based on David Winters'  Winter Park Regional Railroad.  This railroad began in Minnesota, traveled to South Dakota, Texas, and Mississippi, and wound up in West Central Nebraska!  The secret to its longevity was its good track plan and its small size.

Les

[jward]

good post about the model railroad inspirations, ebtnut.

I think that, other than family member, the g&d and the v&o were the two most inspiring layouts I've seen. john allen's g&d represented the railroad I wish I'd seen. it reminds me in many ways of the belgrano railway in argentina between salta and the border with chile at socompa. the innumerable tunnels, bridges and loops of the g&d are all found on this line. maybe some day I will get to see it all in person.

the v&o, on the other hand, represents the railroads I grew up with, particularly the western Maryland and clinchfield. there was one  photo of a little helper station on his railroad, called dawson springs, that is the most convincing modeling I have ever seen anywhere. even though it only existed on his layout, I've been there. or rather, I've spent afternoons sitting at a place like it, hanging out with the helper crews while they waited for a train to push up the mountain. allen McClelland achieved what few are able to do in this hobby. he captured the context and the spirit of railroading.

by comparison, I have seen nothing inspiring in model railroader for many years. selios and seborg (yawn) may build nice scenery but their railroads feature mindless track arrangements that no real railroad would ever build, designed to be unreachable even if they decided to set out or pick up cars.

one thing I would like to see in the magazines is less dependence on cookie cutter, fill in the blanks layout stories, and more letting people tell their own story. every one of us has inspirations and goals, and a lot of them can't be pigeonholds into a "layout at a glance" box.

[Trainman203]

Electrical whiz kid I am not offended by anything at all here lately.  Nothing you've said has irked me, feel free  to continue.  I've been around a long time and been through a lot.   these days  I only let big stuff get to me, not messages on a model railroad forum.  Now if I found out that after all these years I wasn't going to get Scocial Security next year, THAT would get to me.

Back to model railroading.

John Allen had a beautiful layout, first saw pix of it in 1961, but I was never very interested in that kind of extreme mountain railroading. I've always from the beginning been into Gulf Coast flatland ag branches,  that's what I have first hand knowledge of, and that's what I'm doing now.