How do find routes for different lines from city to city?
Thanks
Perhaps easier to answer if you explained a bit more about what you are trying to accomplish.
A few possibilities:
- How did railways in general decide where to put their tracks - ie surveying etc
- Where do I find maps of these railroad lines from city x to city y
Smile,
Stein
yes I’m looking for maps and what companies operated on them.
Do a Google for “railroad maps”. There’s a bunch of sites. Library of Congress has historic maps. If you go to a railroads home page.(CP, UP, CSX) I’m sure they all have operation maps.
[#welcome]
This is my idea. I would like to do a layout integrating Rte 66 into it. I need to find out which RR ran along Rte. 66 back in the 50’s and 60’s. Does that make more since?
From the Panhandle of Texas to California it was the Sante Fe for sure , farther North I’m not entirely sure of.
What part of Route 66 ?
Trains magazine had an article on Route 66 and the Santa Fe not too long ago - March issue of 2006.
Can be bought from http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/railroading-trains-magazine.html
Stein
I was wanting to start in chicago and hit some of the major towns that ran along the RR eventually all the way to LA
[:-^]
Welcome Vguilford,
That is an awesome project that you are planning.
With that much territory to cover even in a condensed version you had better have three double car garages hooked together for the space that you will need.
But GOOD LUCK to you. It is a great part of railroad history.
James:1 Verse:5
The Wobbly wobbles on.
Johnboy out…
Thanks, I think I going to just do the towns in the song that run along a RR. I was going to do it in HO scale but your right that is alot territory to cover may have to go to N scale.
I ordered a copy thanks
lucky you ! one of the other members of this forum has done a lot of research of the Arizona section of ATSF’s line near route 66 , you can find it here …
[:-^]
Vguilford,
Please don’t think that I am knocking other gauges and I don’t know what age you are.
I know the pros and cons of Non-Gauge and if you are close to my age eyesight and dextraity come in to play and that rules out Non-gauge for me.
Just a thought, and I know that I am wrong at least once a day. At least that is what my wife tells me.
James:1 Verse:5
The Wobbley will always wobble in the Great White north.
Johnboy out…
That’s a lot of towns…and they may not be served by the same railroads, if at all. Starting and ending a layout in major cities several thousand miles apart, and stopping in several medium-sized ones, makes anything like prototypical operation kind of difficult: remember, Los Angeles to Chicago was a trip that took two days on the fastest train (the Super Chief) and far longer for a freight train.
Remember, a mile in N scale is around thirty feet, and the distance from Los Angeles to Chicago is around 2000 miles. Modeling the whole thing in N scale would take around twelve miles. How big of a layout did you have in mind?
Although, this being said, there are ways to do it: you certainly don’t have to model a whole city, just the place where the train runs. The train’s proximity to Route 66 is a different story entirely. It could be done as a series of shadow boxes: one box in a Chicago yard, one box in St. Louis with some switching, etcetera, until one reached a Los Angeles terminal yard. Each scene is physically separate, eliminating the need to model the intervening space, with backgrounds to portray each scene.
I’d recommend getting a book on the AT&SF and comparing their system map with this:
These interactive maps on the BNSF site are useful too .
http://www.bnsf.com/tools/reference/division_maps/?menu=5&submenu=0
Don’t think N-scale will help much, unless you have a huge space available for modelling.
These are the cities mentioned in the version Nat King Cole sung:
- St Louis, Missouri
- Joplin, Missouri
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Amarillo, Texas
- Gallup, New Mexico
- Flagstaff, Arizona
- Winona, Arizona (out of sequence - Winona is east of Flagstaff)
- Kingman, Arizona
- Barstow, California
- San Bernandino, California
Modelling 10 town scenes in very varied landscapes, with some landscape to separate them, is not necessarily a smart project for a first layout.
I would recommend picking a little bit of this - perhaps something not modelled too often - say Joplin, Missouri: http://tinyurl.com/2k4ra7 or
Winona, Arizona: http://tinyurl.com/3dtfdt
All maps from http://www.topozone.com
Joplin seems to have a lot more potensial than Winona for interesting operations [:)]
Smile,
Stein
Joplin, MO does sound like an interesting place: an interchange between the Frisco and the KCS, two wyes, industries, and even a spot where it looks like one railroad passes over another. Plus it’s not a really big city, probably a good spot for some photogenic modeling. You are correct, it’s an awfully big project for a first layout–but starting with a small layout based in Joplin and building (and motoring) east and west from there might be a good first s
On the Topozone map - I don’t know how old it is - I also see tracks labelled from the MKT (Missouri-Kansas-Texas, aka the “Katy”) and from the Missouri Pacific (aka MoPac). Looks like an interesting place to model.
Grin,
Stein