I’m writing to you from the other side of the pond, as I live in Denmark. I’m about to start building a new layout.
I would like to do something like Lance mindheims new layout.(Very nice work) http://www.lancemindheim.com/ Of course I’m not trying to make the same as he did, but somthing simular, so I’m in need of a prototype area to model. Does any of you guys have an idea that might work?
I realize that I’m not able to built Kansas or Los Angeles, but a smaller industrial area with mostly railserved warehouses and industries, but also other non railserved industries or buildings.
Since I have collected a reasonble amout of engines and rolling stock, mostly BNSF. I would like the area to be served by the BNSF or by a local rail company with conections to BNSFs grid.
If you can provide me with photos, street names, or even areanames, it would be much apriciated.
With no offense meant towards Mr. Mindheim, his track plan is exceedingly simple, just a lead with several long spurs breaking off of it and then a series of long, low, shallow depth warehouses for industries with nice scenery.
Design a similar track plan that fits your space, pick any major city served by the BNSF, pick a couple industries you would like to ship to and use the internet yellow pages to look up names for those type industries.
There is likely no North American railroad traveling through more different climate zones than BNSF. Is your “image” of your railroad one of California palm trees, desert scenery, great plains, northwest woodlands or southern swamp? The BNSF serves cities and industrial parks in each of these areas, and internet maps of those locations would be of assistance. Many of the states served by BNSF are larger than Denmark, and so a little more discussion from your view of the type of area you want would be helpful.
I’m not quit shure, but I would like some kind of a Horbor theme, with container terminals and container vessels. But that doesn’t mean that the whole layout must be at a seaside location.
So I guess, that what I’m really looking for is something to choos from.
How much space do you have? A container terminal is HUGE. A modern doublestack 5 pack car is 300+ scale feet long. That’s over 3 feet. A 3 car train with 15 platforms runs 9-10 ft long. Normally container trains run in the 100-200 platform range. One other consideration is there is very little switching on container trains. The spot the train, they unload the train, they reload the train, the train departs. Very little “railroad” work.
One of Mindhiem’s criteria is less selective compression, a few large industries.
As mentioned, container ships are huge, and best modeled in the background. However, port facilities such as Port Newark/Elizabeth (NJ) also have scrap facilities, oil/fuel facilities, lumber and bulk material terminals, warehousing etc. in addition to container facilities, so perhaps that might be a better way to go - model the scrap/bulk/warehousing/fuel etc to provide for terminal/industrial switching operations, and perhaps on a seperate 7 or 8 foot shelf module model a (slice) of a container port, w/ on dock rail access - the container ship could be a photographic backdrop if you don’t want the expense of building a ship model (Don’t forget mountains of containers - I think they stack them 6 high around Newark).
I believe the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach have similar such layouts, and probably many other harbors around North America do also, so there’s your BNSF.
I also feel that a container shipping area with ships, cranes, etc. would take quite a bit of space to model. If you’re looking for a city that has a lot of industrial areas to use for ideas then look at Kansas City. There are many industrial areas spread all over the KC metro area. You could choose industries that you like and would fit your space and then do a BNSF themed layout loosely based on Kansas City.
One suggestion I personally would make is to have a team track. In the town where I work there is a team track. There is an industry located about 3/8 mile away that receives shipments of of aluminum ingots by rail. They’re shipped in aboard boxcars. The boxcars are spotted at a loading dock. The industry sends a tractor trailer truck to the dock with a small fork lift. The fork lift unloads the ingots from the boxcars into the truck which hauls them the short distance to the factory. There the ingots are extruded into various aluminum parts. Mainly they make parts for window frames. This would be a very easy industry to model as the factory can be off the layout. All you need is the team track and loading dock. I’ve used the same idea on my layout. Hope this helps.
There is a great tendency for port areas to be served by shortline railroads either independently owned, as a subsidiary of a class I railroad, or jointly owned. Such is the case at the Richmond deepwater port http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Richmond,_California (San Francisco Bay Area, California). I believe Richmond is the primary port BNSF uses in central California and secondarily by the UP. (I don’t know what four railroads the wiki article refers to.) Both port facilities and land-based industries are railroad-served there. As I recall, there was an article in a model railroad magazine or ezine within the last couple of years about it. Richmond’s port is smaller than other ports along California’s coast (Oakland and Long Beach), so could be easier to compress. I don’t believe the inland sea ports of Sacramento and Stockton play a significant role in BNSF traffic.
I also live on the east side of the pond. The solution I have found is to shape a layout around what Trains mag calls a “hotspot”. This is often a place where lines bottleneck at a river crossing, diamond(s) or junction with few lines but lots of traffic.
A hotspot doesn’t need a lot of space. Mostly by their nature they are pretty confined… although maybe surrounded by a lot of stuff…
A lot of my old Trains mags have these at or near the back page - don’t know if they still do it.
The thing is that you have a choice:-
If you want to mainly switch cars and have them stand on spurs for industries then model the industries etc.
If you want rolling trains (with maybe a spur and/or the start of a spur (or two) for an industry) then model a hotspot.
Dave,Actually Lance nailed the modern industrial park branch line…I have studied these fool things for several days (used Bing maps) at various locations to use as a guide line for my Slate Creek Industrial the operation is simple in most cases pull in and reverse move out…90% of the industries was the modern “concrete box” style industrial buildings and there was far more then 2 industries on 99% of the industrial branches I viewed.
One possibility is to get the Third Quarter 2003 issue of The Warbonnet, published by the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society.
It has a long article about the Los Angeles Junction Railway which is largely in Vernon, CA. The article includes many pictures and it also has diagrams of its trackage. The Los Angeles Junction is entirely a switching railroad. It is now part of the BNSF.
For diagrams of U.P. industry trackage in Los Angeles and vicinity check my website:
This shot is in Canada near the U.S. border and that is the Pacific Ocean in the background. To the right is a couple of large buildings where they make luxury yachts. There is also a marina along the trestle.
Most of the trains I see on this trestle carry containers or coal. I sometimes see shorter mixed freights with grain cars, gondolas and various lumber cars. I’ve seen four diesels pulling six freight cars. I often see packs of Loco’s all by themselves cruising up over the U.S. border lookin like they’re up to no good.[:-,] I have seen as many as six lashed up making the trip. Makes me think of the evil Diesels in my kids Thomas the Tank Engine Videos when I see that.
There are lots of lumber loading facilities that are quite small in the area, where you will see no more than a dozen cars being loaded by forklift in what is nothing more than a large paved lot. Also lots of “one off” kind of loads are spotted here going north and south. Small and huge cement plants are also in the area and I see Cement Hoppers often in the mixed Freight.
Golf courses are plentiful all along this route right up into Vancouver. If I don’t see five or six trains during a round it is a bad day. The fifth hole is called Railway. Sidings and warehouses abound all along this route and the sky is the limit when it comes to trackside industry or scenes.
And that’s basically what I was saying all most are is a lead with several parallel spurs serving one story concrete or metal boxes with doors in them. By changing the names on the buildings, what’s on the backdrop and the vegetation, you could move the same trackplan to any part of the US on any number of railroads.
The point is that with that particular track arrangement finding a specific prototype isn’t as necessary as some other types of operation.
You are taking me a tad literal, by 'couple" I meant “some”. But it wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary to have an entire industrial park with only one or two industries still shipping by rail.
The point is that with that particular track arrangement finding a specific prototype isn’t as necessary as some other types of operation.
Absolutely! These modern industrial branches blends quite well with freelance layout design or free style modeling-free style modeling is what I call a fella like me that has several locomotives from various railroads such as CSX,NS,C&HV,N&W and Southern-that why I decided to do a “modern” industrial branch but,with older buildings…Of course these modern concrete or metal “box” buildings is easy to scratchbuild so,I may replace the older style buildings.
