I’ve always liked and wanted to model the Gum Stump & Snowshoe, now that I have a house with a basement I started. I have up on the other half an 8x16 O gauge with an access in the middle of it. I have a city, small town and trailer park placed as well as how I want the track, now to wire and scenic it.
The GS&S was in an old MR Track Planning Ideas book built by Chuck Yungkurth, and he really squeezed it tight onto a 1x6 shelf. Mine will be a bit bigger, I had a time getting it together as is with a larger shelf. Mine will be 6’10" x 15" - I have to add an addition to the one end. I’m using scrap 1/2" that I have. I also only have 2 elevations, 4" and 3" … I dont know if my Mantua 0-6-0 will make that steep 3" climb until I get that roughed up roadwork in. The shelf will be 41" off the floor, thats comfortable for me- with a 14" backdrop that I’ll paint a sky blue on sheetrock. I’ll fool with trying to glue onto scrap this web type material that you stretch for halloween for clouds to see how it looks. I also have to get that rail off the edge of the board and back more. This is just a rough work up to see what I can fit in, I know I’ll be making adjustments.
The upper left will run down an 18’ wall and out 8’. Also on the left side I’ll run into the work shop and out on the right, the other end into the burner room and out so I can run a train continuously.
I cant compress my pics so I uploaded them to a website rather than have a long download for some opening them here.
IIRC, the standard train on the original Gum Stump and Snowshoe was a Varney (B&O) Dockside 0-4-0T and two 40 foot cars.
Our Japanese friends like to take a layout that size (or smaller) and superdetail everything to the Nth degree. The hard part will be to keep up interest in operations. If you have end-of-track access at one end of your shelf, you can interchange a few cars at a time with ‘the rest of the world,’ to help fight off boredom.
Thanks, I will be getting an 0-4-0 docksider to go along with this setup, it’s part of a larger layout to be. My first thoughts are to use a random system each time I run this section. I have to give it more thought. Off the top I’m thinking of randomly selecting the industires I’ll have- then placing the cars also randomly selected in order of the first to last. Then start switching them to the industries, then again randomly select the industries to remove the cars.
Once I finish the whole layout which will be almost 33 feet long on three walls and circles in two end rooms for continuous running, then I can move in freight from the other end.
I also had N gauge but it got to the point it was too small for me to work on, my eye’s arent what they used to be, and a bit of the shaky hands, if I drop something it’s gone … I gave it all to my son who built a grand layout with a helix even. Then I went back to O gauge because of the size and easier handling, but HO was always my first love of trains.
My daughters and son gave me some nice money for Christmas, so I got back into HO as well as the O that I have.
i looked at the first photo but when i tried the second i got the
message . i guess i used up your quota ! [sigh]
i’ll have another try later , so far it looks great . the GS&S has been used in many layouts and i’m also hoping to include one in mine . in fact i’m thinking of starting with that since space for a larger layout will be delayed yet again (darn leaky roof!)
Sorry about that roof, I hope all goes well with it.
I’ve wanted to do the GS&S for years and I’m finally getting to it in my old age … It offers some tricky switching, but I have to widen it because at the farther end I’ll be sending a rail into the workshop and back out, I need to make room for that, I’d like 18" radius but I’ll have to see how far into the shop it goes and how it looks spacewise, I can give a foot so more likely 15". I wont be running long passenger cars so thats no problem.
I havent decided yet on an era, all steam or steam and diesel, this wont follow any particular prototype, my town years ago was big on shipping ice and had a large yard, today only one track runs through.
Sorry also about you not being able to see the other pics, I dont know why- I have plenty of room on the web site. I’ll see about trying to upload them to a photoshop, I did with family pics, but damned if I know how I did that, I was just trying and cant find out how … memory and retention problems have been setting in lately…
Bill - An interesting historical note regarding the Gum Stump & Snowshoe, that perhaps may be recalled by some older hobbyists today, is that in addition to its being considered a “classic” among designs, Linn Westcott stated that he considered it THE best small layout design ever created!
However, an equally enlightening viewpoint resulted from an exchange I had with Chuck Yungkurth some years ago. At that time he related that the GS&S had actually proven somewhat less than satisfactory for him, in that a lack of any run-around track(s) had severely limited the operating potential and made it very repetitious. Since staged trains must always approach from the left to make drop-offs, rolling stock had to be pretty much handled in the exact same limited manner for forwarding to industries every time and the switcher could never get around a cut of cars. Likewise, lacking any run-arounds, turnouts for industry supply tracks must all face in only one direction unless the “five-fingered-crane” comes into play. This “builder’s-own” comment is worthy of consideration when creating any modern version of the GS&S design (I’ve had one on the drawingboard for years myself).
Incidentally, sometime in the 1960’s MR carried an article about an expanded GS&S, where the lower-level yard end of the layout also fed a railcar ferry. This addition was very clever and expanded operations considerably.
I go back to HO modeling 45 years when our son was 5, I built a layout in the basement storage bin that tenants had at that time on a small door. Later on when I saw the GS&S I always liked it but never had the opportunity to build one, and still feel it’s one of the better small layouts. I understand it can get tiring probably with no run around, I want to keep the basic design of it and widen the board, it will also be lengthened to 6’11" from the original 6’, maybe I can squeeze in a small run around. I’ll also try laying in a small turntable and see how it looks.
The west end of the board shows a 15" curve, that will feed the GS&S from the outside off the layout I’ll build on the longer 18’ wall.
I’m using a piece of 15" wide scrap but will have to go to the lumber yard and get a 4x8 and cut in half.
I like the idea of the GS&S feeding a railcar ferry, I could add that on to the side with an extended piece. I have some old MRs but not sure how many go back to the 60s… I’ll have to go through my boxes to see what I got. I dont recall that article though.
I have planned on doing a version of the GS&S in HOn3. The original articles in MR (1963 and 1966) pointed out that without a runaround track, 2 locos were required to get a train in the proper order to switch the industries on the upper level. In correspondence with Carl Arendt, Carl pointed out that the most common revision was to add a runaround track on either the upper or lower level, or both to eliminate the 2 loco requirement.
Good thoughts Fred for a small seaport, I have track down to what I want to do, and a seaport would have to be small, I havent worked that in yet, but I like the idea but I would have to extend my width more, I doubt I will do that until I actually build the elevations and set them into place, and get the track down, then I can see better what else I might want to add.
My GS&S will be at the short end of my layout to be… extending out 6’10" and 18" wide, and will be a stand alone operation. But I will be adding a complete circle to the overall track plan, two lines from the west will feed it, and the track coming out to complete the circle will have a switch to feed if from the east.
This is a very rough not to scale rendition of what I want to do.
The loop out of the other room on the right- actually extends to the left much further, half way at least, so adding a run around might not be feasible. I have some tweaking yet to do. I also may hide that loop in a mountain.
Thanks thats nice, I need a bit more than 3’ in the length, at the opposite end I can only fit in 8’. I’ll have to see about incorporating it into the back wall which is 18’, I have no shelving up there yet, but it will be 2’ wide, I could put it to the back.
I’m looking at old photos I took of the Lackawanna Mine Slope #190 ¶, I want to scratchbuild that, I could put that where I was going to put the GS&S.
I’ll upload some pics later to a web site for easier viewing.
… I gave it all to my son who built a grand layout with a helix even. Then I went back to O gauge because of the size and easier handling, but HO was always my first love of trains.
