I’m open to ideas & images to use for my container port that I wish to located in this area on my upper deck, just down from the SantaFe train station. This west coast port will be the imaginary origin for the container trains that will travel east to Baltimore located on the lower level.
The shelf space is only a total of 18” deep, and the space between those two boards is about 6 feet in length.
(that foil shaped rectangular opening was a window that will be covered over with blue solid board matching the other wall covering)
I need one thru track on that upper deck area that can ‘mask’ some of the trains that are carrying coal, etc, that would NOT be passing in front of the container port, nor the SantaFe station. So I am imagining that track to be installed back very close to the back wall of that deck area,…and hidden from view by some sort of a view block, or multiple stacks of containers.
I’m imagining 2, maybe 3 tracks running down the front edge of that container area, one that will be the other mainline of two, and one that will be a Santa Fe passenger train track.
Perhaps you could find one of the Heljan operating models, which could actually load containers on cars. As I recall, these were pretty neat to see in action, but I think their play value would diminish after a while. They were originally very expensive. It might be fun for operating sessions, to let one operator just run the container terminal.
For a practical container port model, though, I think the idea of putting the ship and crane on a printed background is better. Guard shacks, chain link fencing, container trucks and lots of containers would bring the scene to life.
There are container ports of all sizes from Alaska, the West Coast of Canada Washington, Oregon, California, Mexico, down to the southern tip of Chile. Start checking them out on Google Earth and you will get lots of Ideas.
I believe there are smaller operations up some of the rivers that can handle even the largest container ships, but you are more likely to see the smaller vessels in the smaller facilities.
As far as mixing coal and containers, both are shipped out of Roberts Bank Superport. Lots of videos and photos of that operation.
Your port is fictitious and that makes it easier to put together.
A smaller port at Prince Rupert. I agree that putting the ship(s) and cranes on the backdrop would be the way to go. You may be able to get a suitable photo from Google images and resize it.
Bunh of years back there was an MR series on building an intermodal port. In a rather small space. Ships were printed on the backdrop - they are WAY too big to actually put a model of one, one ship along would fill your shed.
The other option is to not make it a port where ships are loaded and unloaded, but rather a truck terminal where the containers are transferred to and from the truck chassis. They can be huge as well, but typically are smaller than the piers, and can be made relatively small without ruining the effect. And they seem to come in all sizes and shapes - long and narrow with only a couple of long tracks, or short and wide with lots of tracks. There was one near me that wasn’t too huge, but they have since replaced it with a gigantic facility which has a multilane entry/exit adjacent to the local freeway. And the road between the freeway exit and the new intermodal facility was widened so there are two right turn lanes for trucks going into the facility and two turn lanes to get on the freeway.
My original thoughts were that I would have a LOT of containers stacked in the foreground, then the cranes & ship(s) in the background,…painted on the backdrop.
I didn’t think I would have enough space for the train loading equipment. But I ran across a few images I had saved that has me rethinking if I could limit some of those large stack of containers to those at the ‘view block’ area along the rear wall,…then provide some train loading equipments in the foreground??
Bernard Kempinski has a book about deep-water ports, specifically about the Port of Los Angeles I think, but certainly applicable to other ports as well.
Here’s a link to his YouTube video (real-life shots, CGI animations, and HO scale model shots interspersed):
Back to the container loading area of that upper deck.
I found these images of Walther Mi-Jacks loading side-by-side double track configurations. I do realize the Mi-jacks don’t normally straddle 2 tracks, but it looks real acceptable to me.
I also like the looks of those LED lights on the cranes
I don’t have room for 4 tracks as depicted here, but rather only 2 tracks.
I’m going to do some experimenting with the track arrangement as to whether to have 2 tracks side-by-side, or perhaps to either side of a central truck delivery roadway.
I don’t have the shelf depth to have 4 tracks in my container yard, rather I will have to settle for 2. I can have 2 or 3 of those cranes down the length,…probable just 2 as it is a rather short length. Now lets see about the spacing of those tracks under the crane(s).
I’m partial to the tracks being located to either side of the central roadway? It appears a little less congested that way??
I think that to use Trainboard as a photo host for posts here that are visible to anyone, one must place the images in Railimages, not just link them from a Trainboard discussion thread. At least, that works for me.
