Hi all,
I was wondering, how do you view your layout? For example, my layout is focused on yard switching, and consists of a yard fed from staging, with about a foot of mainline at each end. So to me, it’s a logic puzzle played out in 3D on the table in front of me.
Cheers,
tbdanny
I try to view my layout from the scenery side; I have, however, had a few layouts in which wiring problems gave me some extended views of the bottomside.
Inspired by the Great Northwestern / Warm Springs idea which appeared in a recent MR, the new T/C will be point to point. No continuous running.
Extensive service area at one end. Diverse rail served industry evrywhere else. Like OP, it will be a 3D puzzle.
Emphasis on believable track patterns.
I see my ISLs as a rail served industrialized area and plan my track accordingly without the time savor puzzle design since I don’t see switching industries as a puzzle but,a day’s work for a railroader.[tup]
I’m attempting to recreate an era and locale, specifically a medium-sized Texas coastal port in April 1947. It is a switching layout, with the “main lline” really just a suggestion. I enjoy the historical research almost as much as construction.
In concept my layout is a representation of one possible historical senario. While essentially freelance in roadname, it represents the actual location in which I live (but with name changes) and operates along the lines that several RRs once did in the region. Operating point-to-point as a branchline, it serves two of the area’s cities and some smaller communities. Limited in scope as it is, there are no huge locomotives, or hundred car trains, only smaller, lighter locos and the logical commerce one might expect on such a modest branchline operation. Scenery does play a large part in the depiction but is simply the appropriate background to regional running.
CNJ831
Visit the HHRR: http://s64.photobucket.com/albums/h182/CNJ831/HHRRtour/?albumview=slideshow
My 3 deck Santa Fe was started in 1984 after a series of freelance roads. It was intended to represent an area of the Santa Fe in Oklahoma where I grew up. My dad spent 50 years in engine service on the Oklahoma Div. most of those years were at Enid Ok, a town surrounded by a refinery and manay terminal style grain elevators of Union Equity (later Farmland), plus Pillsbury, Continental, General Mills and others. I worked for the Santa Fe in clerk service summers while going to college from 1954 through 1958, and later went to the General Office Building in Topeka to develop systems for the new mainframe computers.
My layout was originally sent in 1984, later moved to 1989 for several reasons. This was a period of heavy unit grain train operation during late May into June, with loaded trains stacked west and east of Enid waiting to get in to unload, and loaded trains waiting to get out, mostly headed for Texas gulf.
The longest mainline on my layout is the actual Enid branch, which ran from Kiowa KS (Waynoka) to Enid, then to Guthrie and went on the mainline south to Oklahoma City and beyond. I have staging yards at Oklahoma City for Texas, hidden staging for Arkansas City, the north end of the division, with the Enid district leaving at Guthrie. Everything north of Guthrie is staging. I also included the old SLSF BN line from Tulsa, which is staging, into Enid, then running on shared track with the Santa Fe to Waynoka which is visible staging. The Enid dist was non signaled 35mph traffic and limited passing track capabilities, which makes operating those grain trains interesting and frustrating.
The layout is for all purposes, finished, though I tweak here and there, but getting to be older takes it toll and arthritis keeps me from building and bashing like I used to, but I still enjoy operations on the Santa Fe.
Bob
My freelanced railroad is a composite of several railroads which operated from the west shore of the Hudson through northern New Jersey and into southern New York state. Conceptually, it roughly parallels the Erie’s route as far as Binghamton and the Lackawanna’s west to Buffalo, with a major branch serving the NYOW territory. the modeled portion of this fictionalized railroad is in the NY-NJ area with the east end staging representing interchange partners in the New York City area and the west end staging representing points beyond Port Jervis, including the branchline to Utica. No one railroad had all the elements I wanted in my layout so I combined the features of each that I liked. Originally, the New York Central was going to simply be one of the east end interchange partners but so much outstanding NYC equipment has become available since I began the layout that I’ve now made the NYC a major stockholder in my fictionalized railroad with trackage rights over the line. Much of the revenue comes from bridge traffic which justifies a wide variety of road names in my rolling stock. I prefer the freelance approach to prototype modeling because it gives me the freedom to create what I want on the layout rather than being restricted to recreating something that actually existed.
I like switching. Therefore you have to run the train to the industrial district. [:)]
But the best is moving the train with good scenery.
Wolfgang
My layout is an expression of my imagination that has come to fruition on a 4x8 tabletop. It’s designed for some interesting ops, albeit not the most prototypical ever. And I enjoy the scenery side as well. So, I guess as just my own little model railroad that I’m building my way.
My layout is little more than a placeholder while I’m still on active duty. It’s portable, so it can come along with me every time I move. Even with my a-building Enola Yard extension, it’s not THE layout, merely a layout to scratch the itch. Perhaps Enola, PA can survive as a part of a future, permanent layout, but the main 'roundy-round door will very likely not. It was never really designed to.
So why bother to put time and work into a temporary placeholder? Because! Building is my favorite part.
I like seeing what I can do. About 5 years ago, I started with a box of old trains from the attic. Most of the engines have been retired, but most of the rolling stock has been upgraded with Kadees, and new wheels/trucks as necessary.
I do like scenery, but now that the first phase (a 5x9 table) is complete, I’m understanding that I didn’t include staging, and I’m short on industries to switch as well. So, Phase II is beginning, and it will have a series of long sidings that could be used as either staging or a long, double-ended yard.
I enjoy running and rail-fanning my layout, so I like to have a couple of loops where I can just let trains run unattended, while I take control of switchers, or interleave trolleys between the other mainline traffic.
As a three dimensional painting produced from my visual brain.
Ive done it all. Now I simply stick a bunch of trees somewhere, run a spur and logging camp and all done.
Run trains!
Standing up! [(-D]
My layout a bit of everything…some yard switching, some industrial switching, mainline action…
It’s a freelanced shortline, connecting the Delaware & Hudson, Reading and New Haven.
Nick
Mine is the view of a madmen. Forced into a 4x8 with an ever expanding roster of equipment that doesn’t belong, i make do with what i have.
Though i desire to model the Northeast Corridor (and electric stuff in general), i do not have the time or space, so i loosely base my layout on the North Jersey Coastline, and try to shoove anything i can pass off as “NJ” into it. of course, my layout is now so generic that you can’t tell if its 1979 Conrail, or if its the other Tuesday last week.
E44s, or ALP46s? GG1s with form Great Northern coaches marked for the NJ DOT, or ALP44s with Comet II Push-pulls? U34CHs or PL42ACs?
there is no real answer. as such, i view my layout as having an identity crisis. who knows when i’ll figure it out.
other than that, i see my layout as “fun”, [:P]
Mine is a portion of a trans-Sierra mountain mainline set during mid October in the late 1940’s with big steam still hauling east-west traffic between Oakland and Salt Lake City. My main yard, Deer Creek, is where the “Valley” power coming up from Sacramento changes to “Mountain” power to hike the trains over Yuba Pass. So there’s a lot of action either changing out locos or adding helpers.
It’s still mainly big steam, so no matter whatever year I’ve chosen for any of my operating sessions, diesels are still at least ten years in the future. There is some local seasonal traffic–mainly hauling cattle from low to high country pastures or adding late-season foothill fruit reefers to eastbound expidited frieights–and a daily short ‘turn’ between Deer Creek and points both east and west, but mainly it’s heavy freight and passengers.
I’m a “Lone Wolf” and I operate on ‘real time’, so when I have a session, there are usually no more than one or two trains per hour on the layout. The layout is planned for 18-20 freights in an actual day, plus 4 scheduled passengers. It’s also DC, so I can handle the operations quite well.
My next big project is for a staging yard on the other side of the garage, to accommodate the trains that would be running if I spent the entire day out in the garage on the layout, LOL! That way, they’d be ‘pre-made’, instead of either making them up in the yard or using my trusty 0-5-0 switcher to assemble them.
But hey, I’m having fun.
Tom [:)]
Tom, I’ve seen great photographic scenes of your layout, but I’m quite curious about the layout design. Isn’t it possible you might post a track plan or at least a schematic? Please?
Here is a schematic of my proposed layout:
And here is the track plan of the branchline terminous of Aeolis, occupying the upper deck:
The layout is based on the imagined standard-gauging of SP’s line from Lone Pine, CA to Mina, NV, with an imaginary branchline approaching the eastern access to Yosemite Park.
Mark
My layout is a 3 circle continuous operation, hands free layout. It has to be because I have to hold / watch my 15 month old son while I “operate” it. It is just a temporary layout anyways and in the spring I’ll tear it down.
When he gets older I’ll start on a heavy industry perminant layout with alot of switching and some mainline operation. It will be based in western PA and have two railroads, the P&LE and PRR feeding the mills, which was very typical of the Pittsburgh steel mills.
I work for USS and worked in one of the mills for a few years as a foreman, so I understand heavy industry operation! I’ve seen blast furnaces up close and personal and even looked into the sight glass to see the molten iron inside! I’ve seen them tap heats. I also got to witness a basic oxygen furnace performing a heat (the term for converting iron to steel). Let me tell you… if you’ve never seen that you really have to try to somehow. It is definitely the most impressive thing I’ve seen in my life.
At any respect, I really like seeing heavy industry and I think it would be a great thing to model in a railroad!
As a work in progress… no matter how finished it may look to the outsider.