First Layout, Need help with visible staging

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Good Morning,

I am building my first layout, and I am building a foldable layout inspired by (rather I am copying from) M.C. Fujiwara. You can see his layout here: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/195425.aspx

I intend to take this layout and reskin it to be a Midwest layout. However, car floats were not a prototypical practice on Midwestern roads. Any ideas on how to turn that car float into a visible staging that wont just look like a freight yard on the right side of the layout. Thanks for your help in advance!

-Connor

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Connor: I do not understand the question. Are you looking to make a carfloat believable on a Midwestern layout, or are you looking for alternatives to using the carfloat?

Or… did I completely misunderstand what you are wanting to do?

-Kevin

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M.C. did a fantastic job modifying my original design.

But if you are going to park cars for interchange in the spot where M.C. placed the car float, it’s going to look like a yard. By using a different color ballast, you might suggest that it’s part of a different railroad … curving the tracks slightly toward the front edge might also suggest a connection “off the benchwork”.

Another option would be to make the section removable as a cassette. My original design had the interchange off the main benchwork and could be used in this way.

Good luck with your layout.

Byron

4

Four of my five staging yards are visible in the layout room (the fifth goes through a hole in the wall, with two staging tracks on a shelf in one of my workshops).

The four visible ones are stacked, as my layout is partially double-decked, and while they’re right in plain view in the layout room, I consider them to be “elsewhere”.

In the photo below, the two lowest tracks, right at the edge, represent a prototype interchange partner, which enters the actual layout over a lift-out at the room’s entryway…

…and immediately above those tracks, but set back a bit, are two tracks which represent unmodelled industries…theoretically, dozens, or even hundreds of industries, if I wish…simply a method of generating traffic without taking-up too much space. (The track in the background is seldom used, but allows for continuous running if visitors just want to see a train running. Otherwise, the layout is operated as point-to-multiple-points.

Next up is the staging for the main- and partial upper level of the layout…

…which enters the actual layout on the double tracks, shown in the photo below, while the two industrial tracks are connected to the lower track, which also leads to a lower portion of the same town…

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Making forum links to forum threads clickable is an art form on all it’s own. I have taken to cheating and using Tinyurl.com Here

I think it’s clear the OP wants to ditch the car float.

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OK, and going from the link Byron shared, it looks like the carfloat was simulated, and not permanently attached to the layout.

It seems very easy to just build it and decorate it as a yard, maybe with the curve and different colour ballast as Byron suggested.

Seems easy enough.

I hope the OP responds if he is looking for something more.

-Kevin

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Not so hard:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/195425.aspx

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There were car ferries and carfloats on the Great Lakes, so that can be your prototypical cover story.

I think a carfloat can be an interesting scenic element. It’s really not like staging, because a carfloat would not likely have a locomotive or a caboose on it, but the above-mentioned cassette idea is a good one. Actually working the carfloat, loading and unloading cars, using “idler” flatcars to keep locomotives off the float bridge, possibly “weighing” the cars to keep the float balanced would add operational interest.

A carfloat is also a universal source and universal destination for rolling stock, much like staging. It’s also a bit of railroad that you can build scenery around, perhaps piers, water, port structures and even a tugboat.

My layout is waiting to be put back together in its new home, but I do have a carfloat and terminal, plus another carfloat waiting to be assembled. I think it’s a specialized but very interesting addition to a layout.

One suggestion:. A carfloat needs easy access. Don’t bury it in a corner.

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While I agree that a carfloat can be an interesting feature on a layout, the O.P. is pretty clear that it’s not a feature that he wants, and I certainly wouldn’t consider it to be all that useful as a staging device, due to its limited capacity - an operational feature for sure, but not staging.
An exception might be modelling the CPR’s Slokan Lake service, which carried both railway cars and locomotives.

Another option for hidden staging in the layout room would be staging tracks/yards below the sceniced portion of the layout, appearing/disappearing, as needed via a ramp, or, less favourably, a helix.
The problem with hiding staging in this manner is access, for both placing new rolling stock in staging or removing cars that have recently arrived in staging.

While my staging yards are in the layout room and visible, normal layout operation, other than bringing trains into or out of staging, does not require the operator to even look at the staging area. When operating in that aisle, the operator’s facing the opposite direction, looking at the modelled portion of the layout there. In all other locations within the room, the staging yards are not readily visible. As I mentioned, they’re considered to be “elsewhere” and they virtually are.

Wayne

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Hey, OP here! Thanks for all the suggestions! I may be confusing terms as I am new to this, so here is a better explanation of what I was trying to figure out. I want to model my hometown in Iowa. I should have specified that.

Basically, I was looking for ideas on how to make new and different cars appear on the layout. The trackplan has an interchange line going to the left, and I intend to use that as one way, but I was enamored about the idea of spotting cars in another spot as a way to break up the finished industrial products into two trains going in opposite directions. I was hoping that would add some interesting operational value.

I was trying to avoid the look of a generic freight yard on one end, and a mainline on the other. I like the idea of changing the ballast and making it obvious that is a different section of track. Potentially I could change the float to an offspot for a through local to pick up from the industrial area without needing to back into the small switching yard. Then I could have a car float-like location, but more likely to be seen in the corn fields of Iowa.

I hope that clears up my intent, I didn’t mean to leave you all confused. I will take these ideas and run with them. Thanks for all your help!

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I wonder if the best approach for him would be to model industrial access hidden behind buildings or backdrop, eith the visible connection heavily fenced off or gated so it only looks ‘populated’ when a staged ‘interchange’ train is to be introduced to the layout with “new” cars. I am trying to think of any non-carfloat way to get whole trains ‘connected to his system of transportation’ other than via something that in his limited space would look like a yard, and am not finding anything that isn’t basically a hidden yard masquerading as a single interchange track where it visibly joins the actual layout’s track… a bit like the South Brooklyn Railway in a sense.

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I like the carfloat idea. My opinion is keep the carfloat and change your location for prototype. Like the others said, it adds operational interest and scenic interest.

This is your first layout, you can model midwest on your next layout.

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One aspect that you have to remember about carfloat or carferry operation is that there was almost always a yard where they sorted out the cars to fit the tracks and balance the weight before they took the cuts to be put on the boats. Just model the yard and call it ‘Carfloat Yard’. I do this on my layout. I add and remove cars as they move or you can use a cassette as Mr.Beasley mentions above.

Scott Sonntag

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Yes there were carfloats/ferries in the “midwest” (including Great Lakes and, early on, the larger rivers such as Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, but obviously there are huge swaths of the “midwest” for which they are simply inapplicable

Car floats/car ferries are, in a literal sense, an interchange of sorts and thus if I was layout planning and wanted the functional equivalent of what a car float or ferry can bring to a layout, I’d make it an interchange. Whether it is regarded as a “staging yard” or not is partly a matter of semantics and partly a matter of how it works and looks.

Tony Koester has an interchange that is, if I read him correctly, partly automated – freight cars are pushed into view from behind a viewblock (trees) or hole in the backdrop. Supposedly this is the Milwaukee Road supplying cars to the NKP. I do not recall if there are Milwaukee Road locomotives involved or not. Bill Darnaby has interchanges with other railraods that are just partly modeled as crossings with the interchange spur being supplied with cars between operating sessions. In a sense that makes them small “active” fiddle yards in a sense. Again semantics can be everything in this game.

So I think an imaginative track planner and layout builder could pretty easily reconfigure what a carfloat or ferry accomplishes on one track plan and construct the practical equivalent as an interchange track/yard. The interchanging railroad doesn’t have to be modeled any more than you would have to model the car float actually sailing into view. The cars are just “there” because “something” just happened, be it the arrival of the carfloat or the arrival of the other railroad’s local.

Dave Nelson

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We’re talking about a 1’x6’ switching layout. Staging entire trains, even in N scale, is probably not what the OP is after (though I might be wrong.)

Connor, excepting a carfloat, any on-layout visible staging with just freight cars is probably going to look, at least a little, like a yard. If you don’t want either, I agree with Byron’s suggestions for turning it into an interchange or a lead for a cassette, noting that there’s also the SP interchange track on the other side for staging another string of cars to be switched.

Phil

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Well after looking at the link, it’s obvious that my illustrated method would be useless for the O.P.'s situation.

With a layout so limited for space, your staging will likely be from the shelf where you store the cars and locomotives not currently on the layout.

Take those from the layout which are going “elsewhere” (off-layout), and put the replacements “just arriving” from “elsewhere” (their boxes on the shelf) onto the layout.

The method mentioned above is the condensed method that my larger staging yards also use:

When a train enters one of those yards, it’s considered to have reached its destination, so all of the cars are remove from the yard, and returned to their respective boxes under the layout. The locomotive(s) then go to the nearest place where they can be turned (on a turntable or wye), and then return to their last staging yard location to have a new train of cars added to them, those cars heading to a different destination, either on-layout, or to another staging yard.

I can, of course, operate those staging yards as switching layouts, but it’s not really something which is of interest for me. I do, however, “switch” all of the towns through which these trains pass, as they travel from one staging yard to the next, so each industry is often receiving new loads (or empties) every time a train rolls into town, and cars are picked up, too, to be moved on, to another town, or to “elsewhere” (staging, then back in their box).

If you don’t have room for staging tracks, staging from wherever those cars are stored when not on-layout is probably your only option, if the carfloat idea doesn’t appeal to you.

Wayne

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What era is being modeled? There were car floats up and down the Mississippi up until the 1970’s.

If you don’t want a car float, then make it an interchange (different railroad) or junction (same railroad). Same difference in how it works, just its dry.

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Hey, OP here! I responded a day or two ago, but it doesn’t appear my post went through. Thought I would add some clarification from my original question and say thanks for all your help.

I may have confused my terms, but the intent of the question was to have a way to introduce new cars in a believable way that were not previously on the layout, while avoiding making the whole thing look like one giant yard on one side. The carfloat does that well in the original design, but I want to model my hometown in central Iowa in the 50s, and there weren’t car floats there. I appreciate the help in identifying other car float areas in the Midwest, but my hometown is near and dear to my heart since I have moved away.

I love looking at all the ways and ideas people have integrated adding new cars to their layout. I really like the idea of the interchange going off to the left (my hometown had a diamond where the CNW and Milwaukee Road crossed), so I will take some modellers liberty to make it an interchange.

For operational interest, the car float on the right side of the layout would give me a second location to dropoff cars for the next day’s pickup. The idea I had in my head was a day’s work for a local switching crew. They take in interchange cars and same-road cars from the left and right sides of the layout, switch the local industries, sort the outgoing cars for their respective roads, then set them for pickup.

I love the idea of making the car float different ballast color. I think I will take that idea and make a mainline through the layout, and ballast it in a standard grey color. The rest of the layout I can do in a brown or cinder color. What was the car float and be the psuedo-departure track where the switching crew spots cars for a simulated through freight to pick up and drop off cuts enroute to the next major yard down the line.

Edit: Looking again at the track plan, I can use the location