Hi [:I]
Im lookin for HO track layout for a coal mine railroad.
I was planning on something big like the one on the picture, but i realy need help on the tracks layout. My RR rom are 19’ x 10’
Regards M4rwin
Hi Marwin, welcome to the forum!
The image you posted is quite small but I can tell that it is the New River Mine kit from Walthers. I have the same kit on my layout.
There are 3 tracks running under the tipple itself and then you can either run a track or service the slag tipple with trucks. Ideally the tracks running under the tipple would continue on allowing a string of hoppers to be pushed or pulled through. This allows a string of empties to be filled. If you are really into the operations, then I have seen some excellent implementations where the mine tracks back up to a hill. The tracks pass through the hill and emerge at a power station. This way you can deliver empties to the mine and have them emerge for collection at the power station. And deliver full loads to the power station that then emerge through the hill at the coal mine.
In my case I have a single siding and then use Peco Medium turouts to split into the 4 branches that I needed.
Does this help? or do you have a more specific question?
tnx simon1966, great ideas [tup] link to a bigger picture → http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/1421/vientosy6.jpg
Please comment on other ideas, allways welcome [bow]
If someone would have a track layout i could use, it would be nice.
Regards M4rwin
That’s better I can see the image on the link. As you can see in this photo they have enough room to run through and re-join the main line, making for easier operations. As you will quickly learn there are many compromises that have to be made and for me space caused some operational limitations. A lot of modern line actually have huge track loops that allow the unit coal train to be pulled through the loading tipple complete and then re-join the main heading in the opposite direction. This would require a lot of space in HO to model well.
thats right Simon, space and compromises is the key thing [tup]
I have a limit in width and that is 4 feet.
For track layout i hope that some of you expert can help me [:)]
Marwin, the best thing to do is to build you mine structure and then temporarily position it where you want it to go. Then, if you use flextrack you can design the trackage to fit on the fly. I don’t think anyone will be able to just give you a plan as there are too many variables, not the least of which is the mine structure that you actually use. There are certain things that will be fixed such as the track centers as they pass through the tipple.
I posted this in response to your question on another forum.
Before you go too far with this, somewhere someone back in the early model railroad days–I think it was AHM built a coal mine that came out of the side of the mountain. Since then, model coal mines tend to come out of the sides of mountains. But in real life, coal is underground and the mines go down, not sideways. The mine you have will work, but the shaft should go down.
A coal mining operation in your space could be a nice operational layout. I operate on an excellent mining layout in a space is about the same as yours.
You can see it in Model Railroad Planning 2006. Traffic flows from smaller mines to a large mine like yours where the coal is sorted. There are two yards and a branch line. It generates operations for 5 or 6 that is varied enough that operations have run continuously every week for the last 28 years.
What I suggest is learning about coal operations. Tony Koester’s book on Coal operations might be a place to start, but I have not read it.
Actually Chip there are several mine types, the Shaft mine which has a head gear and is a vertical shaft, the slope mine where there is a shaft built at an angle, often with rails or a conveyor running up the sloped shaft, drift mines which are at the side of a hill and go in horizontally into the coal seam and finally strip mines where the topsoil is removed and the coal is cut out of a quarry. In Illinois where I live and model, 80% of the mines were shaft or slope mines but there are examples of drift mines. In other parts of the country drift mines are more common WV for example. Strip mines are often associated with Western Coal, but there are examples of strip mines in South West Illinois as far back as the 20’s, it all depends how deep and where the coal seam is located. I ended up scratch building the head gear for my version of New River as I wanted it to be a shaft mine.
Coal operations have changed a lot from the 30’s-50’s era to the modern day, so research the operations for the time you are modelling. For example the mine I am modelling supplied almost 100% of its coal to its RR parent company. As the steam loco faded into history, so did this particular mine. Very little of the coal went to power stations as far as I can tell, except for power plants owned by the RR.
By comparison the only existing mine in the area today fills a daily unit coal train which then hauls the coal to a power station in Southern Illinois.
You’re right I was being too general. I recently attended an NMRA Prototype Modeler’s Meet lecture on modeling coal mines. The point they made is that coal was rarely mined sideways into a mountain like the MR models, particularly the AHM depict. Most of the examples were slope and conveyor.
I actually started with the AHM mine. It turned out to be so far removed from what I needed that I ended up hacking it apart and bashing it into a storage shed and miners wash house. The white building on the right is all that remains of it!
Its best to start using best track layout possible.
Not saying im building it 100% identical. With a good track layout to build furter on, i might skip some trial and errors myselfe.
So im looking for track layouts for a large coal mine.
/edit, there is a nice Coal mine setup on this page → http://www.freewebs.com/cbcnsfan/thelayoutpage.htm
Did find some helpful reallife pictures 
http://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/browse.php?folio_ID=/trans/nss/coal/co
Neat thread. As described in an earlier post, I’ve been planning on a empties in - loads out mine backing to a hill, with a power plant on the other side. This should provide neat operations, as I can take coal drags and empties all the way around my 13x24 layout room.
Due to space constraints, I was planning on using the outside track on the New River Mine as a main, with loads & empties on the other two tracks. Now that I see some of the pictures in this thread, I realize I need to find room for the main to pass in front of the mine. I’d better get my New River Mine kit sooner rather than later, and start test fitting.
Thanks everyone, for inspriation!
Bill Field
Bill, you definitely don’t want to try and run a thru-track main under the tipple of the New River Mine structure. (Did I understand that was what you were thinking?) If you construct the structure correctly there are some drop chutes that come down below the floor of the tipple. These are too low for anything other than a hopper or gondola to pass. IMO you should certainly try and run a separate main around the structure.
First, note that coal is NOT just coal
http://www.sizes.com/materls/coal_bituminous.htm
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/classification-coal-d_164.html
Second, what you actually have is a coal preparation plant of tipple that happens to be connected to a mine. The function of the plant is to clean (remove waste rock), maybe wash the coal, and to sort it by size and maybe type.
http://www.mine-engineer.com/mining/coalprep.htm
In a typical plant they will try to make things work by gravity. That usually means that you have an upper yard to hold the empty hoppers abd/or gondolas, the actual tipple, then a lower yard.
When the mine run appears, it will generally shove the empty cars it is delivering into the upper yard.
As the cars are needed for loading, they will be rolled using the hand brakes from the upper yard to the tipple. Once loaded, they will be rolled into the lower yard to await shipment.
But here things get interesting. The coal will not always come out of the mine in the sizes and grades needed that day. Hence the lower yard also serves as a storage yard for the loaded cars until a customer can be found for that size and type of coal.
So, the mine run crew are forced to extract the cars the mine is ready to ship from the other cars in the yard.
Have fun