Pics from my former "1800's" layout-in-progress

[Terry Toenges]

GD - The trestles are Heljan HO Timber Trestle Bridge kits that I modify to suit my needs.
It is no particular railroad. I was calling it the "Fort Michael and Shelby Station Railroad". I was planning on doing cowboys and Indians and cavalry with a "Fort Apache" style fort.
The best part was doing the research. We took a couple of Western vacations and visited about every old military fort West of the Mississippi. We also followed the old Transcontinental Railroad route (as much as we could) from Omaha to Sacramento on one trip. We spent a lot of time on the two lane blacktops as opposed to the Interstates. There is so much more to see doing it that way.
I have already taken it down and went with the multi-scale Christmas layout.
I'm going take the Christmas layout down and maybe do a logging layout. I like switchbacks.
Ray - Glad I could help.  I love your roundhouse. The one I had started was using black foam core board so I could coordinate the entrances with the Atlas turntable.
I can't remember what brand the circus wagons are. Might be Jordan. I intended to paint them so they weren't circus wagons.
I've gotten stuff from Musket miniatures, too.

[CNE Runner]

Hey Terry...you mentioned making a roundhouse so that the door lined up with the Atlas turntable and that struck a nerve. I put a lot of hours into the roundhouse I pictured only to find out that it did not line up with the lead-in tracks! By moving the roundhouse back 6 or 8", and installing some rather wavy track, I was able to line up the lead in tracks with the roundhouse bays. To be completely honest...it looks terrible. I guess that is the major reason I am probably going to sell the roundhouse at our next show and begin construction on the Laser-Art single stall enginehouse. The turntable will still be used to turn engines on my 30"x12' layout (one of the lead-ins will go to the enginehouse. Ah...live and learn. My wife suggested that I build a pit turntable that more closely fits the late 19th century era; but the skill level and expense have made that an illogical choice.

I think your choice of a western-themed layout is a good one. I have seen several plans - I think there might be one in the MR layout plans section of their website. Somewhere, I saw a nice logging layout; but darned if I can remember where ('comes with advanced age I suppose).

Good luck,
Ray

[Terry Toenges]

Ray - Here's a pic of what I was trying to do. On the turntable, I was going to put balsa along the sides of the rails and an upright with cables to make it look like a gallows one. Then I was going to bend short balsa walls on top of the gray perimeter  (where there weren't any tracks) to give the illusion of the pit being a little sunk.

I then thought about cutting away the dark plastic on the table, on each side of the deck rails to make it look like a pit.
I took the table apart and that's as far as I got before I changed my mind about redoing the layout to the current one.

[richG]

Here is an Atlas kitbash that might interest you. Scroll though all the messages for the pictures.

http://66.39.158.142/Forums/viewtopic/t=3122/highlight=turntable.html

I have seen old time photos of railroads the had covered pits.

Rich

[CNE Runner]

Terry, I repainted and weathered my turntable and it came out quite nicely. The added gallows structure would really be neat! If you want to have a roundhouse next to your Atlas turntable, I would imagine you will have to scratchbuild one. Personally, I feel if you want a pit turntable you would be better served by buying a pit turntable and not waste time trying to make the Atlas unit something it isn't. I understand Walthers has a good one in either 90' or 130'. There is a company that sells a craftsman kit that is a copy of a 19th century Armstrong unit - but it is very difficult to build.

I knew I had a prototype picture of a covered turntable pit. After lots of searching here it is:



Ray

[richG]

Hi Terry

This is additional info on modeling the late 1800s. I have used Google books and found a lot of info from the late 1800s to about 1925 that you can download to your PC or sign up for Google and get your own Google book storage. Here are a some examples in case you ever get bored.

http://books.google.com/books?ei=LPmNSdyZGZW6tweexdGNCw&ct=result&lr=&spell=1&q=railroad++turntable+covered+pit&btnG=Search+Books

http://books.google.com/books?ei=LPmNSdyZGZW6tweexdGNCw&ct=result&lr=&spell=1&q=railroad++turntable+covered+pit&btnG=Search+Books

http://books.google.com/books?ei=LPmNSdyZGZW6tweexdGNCw&ct=result&lr=&spell=1&q=railroad+construction&btnG=Search+Books

Rich

[Terry Toenges]

Rich - Thanks for the link. I wasn't aware of the Google books function.