Reality has set in and so it is time to fantasize. But it leaves me in a quandary.
So here’s the givens I have an entertainment room I set up to hold what was going to be Phase one of my Redwood Empire. It is basically an 11x6.5x 30" L shape with provisions for staging. I have another space that is an 11 x14 U shape (the 14’ side is open on one side) that I could build into a dedicated train room and have staging on both sides outside the train room. Theoretically, I could run an around the room shelf over laundry workbench storage
My son has a 2-8-0 Spectrum with sound that is his train. This is included as a given.
The quandary: I really like modeling the West. But the selection of engines is small. Currently I have 2 2-6-0’s and 2 4-4-0’s and a 2-8-0. None have, or can have sound.
I have a 3 truck Shay with sound. A 2 Truck Heisler, and a Class A Climax that I really like. In fact, this era has lots more possibilities with sound, and sound is a very strong druther with me.
If I modeled the west, I’d model mining and cattle. But I’d still want industries and switching. And a yard. It would appear point to point, but run continuously through staging and tunnels.
The scope of logging seems too large for my space. I could get the mill in the 11 x 14 space, but to model the logging operation–log camp, log loading area, would pretty much consume the rest of the space. But I’d get to use my geared locos. But operations would be sparse.
Do you have to model the entire logging camp (every building in 3D)? Couldn’t you just focus on the buildings/processes that interface with rail? That’s what I do for my industry, and you know what a space hog that is…![;)]
Sound could probably be added to you other locos, just may take some creativity. As far as logging, we have a small logging area on our club layout. Not much needs to be modeled to make it convincing. Since logging was usually higher up the mountain, you could have it “superimposed” over the main part of your railroad with interchange down the moutain. Remember, those geared loco are designed for sharp curves and fairly steep grades. The log camp could be “off stage” with just the beginnngs of it represented.
Sort of. Everything is for the railroad in a logging camp. There’s an engine house and service facilities. All the buidings are railcars. It’s a defacto interchange yard between the rail service to the log cutting/loading area and the mainline to the mill.
I’m hoping the Athern old-time 4-4-0 w/sound will be halfway decent.
The good news is that I don’t have to make a decision any time soon. I’m still planning on finishing the 5 x 8 I have started. It’s just that it is such a space hog and the EZ track sucks.
Chip , do a small portion of each. I am facing the same situation, so I decided to do a small portion of each industry that I want to model. We don’t have the whole basement, so we must use the “hybrid” approach.
Of course you could go to “Z” scale and fit the whole plan in…LOL
Chip, the L shaped room seems like plenty of space to have some operations; I know how you feel though. Seems like there is never really enough space to do all the things you really want when setup up layouts.
I have a similar dilemma in that we just moved and my original track plans were scraped, and now I am back to the drawing board with our new house. The new train room is a little longer on one side, but basically a similar rectangle room. The general theory or overall scheme I am trying to incorporate into my current track design plans is to build in a certain amount of “white space”. Similar to what I was told when re-vamping my resume. I am attempting to prevent the “spaghetti bowl” look on the track plan.
The “west” is a big place, and the definition of “the West” has changed several times over the decades. Heck, Ohio used to be “the Wild West”!
You want cattle, lumber, mining AND industry. Have you thought about Missouri or southeast Texas? Each has cattle, mining (coal and minerals), some lumbering(pulpwood, mostly), and at least a few industrial areas.
As for using geared engines, they didn’t all live on hillsides in “big mountain country”. There were as many geared engines that lived inside strip mines as in the woods. You don’t have to even model the mine, just the switchbacks that bring the train out of the pit and towards the interchange track. Heck, there were heislers used here in central Illinois for shuffling cars around large grain elevators and deep shaft coal mines, with nary a hill for miles!
It’s just a matter of looking outside of the box for new opportunities.
I’m not sure how. I had to use N scale decoders to fit in the tenders. No room ofr even a micro speaker. I suppose I could do the sound in the boxcar trick.
Of course, we’ll see what N scale sound brings to the table.
If you’re thinking about “The West” you might also consider the petroleum industry – or the “awl bidness” along with your cattle and mining operations. It was certainly very active in the time period you seem to be modelling, and lots of structures like refineries, wells, and distribution centers are out there on the market.
some good suggestions here about how to fit everything into your trackplan , so i’ll address the sound issue
it should be possible to fit a decoder and speaker in any engine with a tender . unfortunately the amount of work it requires increases in inverse proportion to the size of the tender !
i have the kit version of the MDC 2-6-0 and haven’t added sound yet because i’m still not happy with the way it runs on DC (that’s due to my lack of engine building experience). i don’t know how different the RTR version is , the kit tender’s shell is big enough for a 1" speaker . to make room for the decoder i’m going to have to remove some metal from the frame .
the other possibility is , rather than think outside the box , think of a bigger box . the bachmann small tender easily fits a speaker and decoder and although it’s bigger than the MDC 2-6-0’s tender , they look pretty good together ( i just measured , the bachmann is 3.5" the MDC is 3") . here’s how i installed a tsunami in the bachmann small tender http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=59242
also keep in mind that N scale steam sound decoders are starting to become available , you’d have to check the current draw on the engines in question and compare it to the specs on the decoders , but other than that there’s no reason not to put an N decoder in an HO engine
side note… the bachmann 4-6-0 i installed the tsunami in was also a popular turn-of-the-century loco , it’s not much bigger than the MDC 2-6-0 , and the bachmann 2-8-0 looks huge sitting next to it !
All the plastic geared locos in HO so far have been models of prototypes as they would have appeared in the '20s or '30s (same is true for most HOn3 production and even much of the HO standard gauge Moguls, Ten wheelers, and Americans.). Back dating can be done, except that the prototypes are often larger than those commonly made in the 1890s.
Would you consider shifting your era forward to the '20s? Would allow you to use 2-8-2s and 4-6-2s which are much easier to fit sound in. 40ft cars and steel underframes were just becoming standard, so it’s not too much bigger.
Another option for sound - I’m modeling HO shortline/HOn3 in 1900 with very small locos - is to put the speakers in the scenery. I’m thinking this should be pretty effective on a shelf layout. If I use a train location detection such as Digitrax’s, I can use the info to select the speaker the sound is coming from. Mounting the speaker outside the loco would allow bigger speakers with better sound. If I have direction of travel info, I could even set up a cross-fade scheme between adjacent speakers to have the sound “travel” with the train. Not that I’ve actually tried to implement this yet - it’s still in the “thinking about” stage.
So push it forward a couple of years to, say, the early 1900s. If you move into the teens you can run plenty of Mallets without apology. I started thinking first decade of the twentieth century and advanced to the teens because I wanted to run a combination of larger and smaller power, but with wooden coaches and freight cars. The architecture and non-rail transportation and clothing is only a little different, and the West was still a relatively underpopulated place in the first decades of this century (officially, of course, the Census Bureau declared after the 1890 census that the frontier was “closed,” so you’re only five years away from that in 1885).
Even if you stay in the era you currently occupy, there are a lot of comparatively inexpensive period brass models available secondhand - and the brass market is pretty soft right now.
I don’t know what the inside of the MDC old-time 2-6-0 kit tender looks like, but the RTR has very little space. The coal bin occupies most of the interior and only an N Scale decoder would fit along the edge between the bin and the outer wall. Even There is just not a lot of space left.
Geared locos were used anywhere that the gradients required them, which certainly included mining areas. The very last Shay (Western Maryland #6, now at the Cass Scenic Railway in WV) was built to haul coal, not timber.
One given about the West, in any era, is that a lot of the scenery stands on edge. Much, if not most, of the mining went on at the top of some fairly steep grades. (A major miscalculation on the part of the D&RG was the direction of more heavily loaded traffic over Cumbres Pass. They assumed that the big items would be supplies and machinery for the silver mines, which moved westbound on grades held down to less than 2%. On the other side of the hill they dropped down to Chama, NM, on a 4% grade, assuming that the only things traveling eastbound would be a fairly light weight of silver and the occasional coffin. The silver mines played out, and traffic shifted to agricultural products - which is why trains climbing Cumbres Pass from the west ended up with two mikes on the front and a couple of more to the rear.)
I do a lot of mine via the web, and I started with Caboose Hobbies and the Caboose (just google those terms for the URL). Their prices are generally representative and they’re solid people to do business with. I’ve bought brass on Ebay with success, but I’d be careful - although I will tell you that I had good experiences with both Howard Zane and Dan’s Train Depot as sellers, and they maintain a good web presence at www.piermontdivision.com.
A copy of the Brown Book is good, if you can find it - John Glaab’s edition is the most recent, but the prices are out of date.
Here are some suggestions on period models - both sites generally list steam alphabetically by road name, and caboose hobbies has photos. I generally just look for low-drivered, husky engines that suit my overall concept, rather than the strictly prototypical. Here are some ideas:
Anything Colorado Midland (CM) is great.
Northern Pacific F-1 class 2-8-0
NP or GN 4-4-0 “General Crook” - can’t remember which
Anything V&T or YV (although the latter is rare)
PFM Golden Spike set (usually under UP, CP or SP)
ATSF 3010 class 2-10-2 (an old Westside model, usually inexpensive and dating from the early teens)
Lots of inexpensive SP A-1 class 4-4-2s and P-1 class 4-6-2s - both by WSM
Sierra - lots of 2-8-0 (#24) floating around, as well as 2-6-6-2 #38, which is an older model but easy to backdate. NWSL made a great #18.
Some early D&RGW & D&SL steam, notably the D&RGW 2-8-0s and the D&SL 2-8-2s, an old Sunset model - best without the feedwater heaters, for your era. The D&SL 2-6-6-0s are usually pretty affordable for Mallets, but all of them have the later-era disk main drivers.
Some good UP Harriman Mikes - the MK-1 2-8-2 from Oriental Limited is good, I like mine. Also some older-looking 2-8-0s from Overland Models - the C-57s look nice.
Ma&Pa 2-8-0s from PFM are always good, as are the 0-6-0s.
Chip, the first step is to distill the problems down to their essence. As I see it, you have three:
Locomotives and sound.
EZ track.
Space.
Once the issues are reduced to precision, your options start opening up. The Spectrum 4-6-0’s will take decoders, people here have done it. The boiler diameter is identical wih the MDC old time 2-8-0s. They are prototypical for both the D&RG and the time period you are interested in, within 5 years anyway. A diamond stack, a new pilot, possibly a new cab, some frosting for the domes, and you’re in business.
You can designate a sound car to follow the locomotives you have.
You can use a wide area sound system for the locos you have that won’t take decoders.
The EZ track is a bigger problem, but it isn’t insurmountable. You could build the interchange over again, in flextrack in the 11x14 space, and later convert the current layout to the logging operation, or rip up the EZ track and build the logging operation using flextrack. Either way, you’d be able to run trains while you built the dream.
You can decide to live with the EZ track and put the logging operation in the 11x14 area. That’s more space than some people use for an entire layout. Make it fit.
I’ve run into similar issues here. Sometime the indecision mounts up and i wonder how the layout will ever become what I want it to be. When that happens, instead of letting vague worries mount up into a black cloud too large to deal with, I start breaking them down into individual issues, listing all the options for each problem, choosing one, and deciding not to look back. The perfect layout doesn’t exist. You have enough room for a world class layout though, and how much more can you ask for than that?
You seem to be equating “west” with mining or logging, and that may be limiting you.
You have two large areas to consider. Maybe isolate them and treat them as separate areas. One will be your “west”, the other will be …east?, mid-west? You can join them as you please later on if you know more or less how you will do it.
Maybe bite off one mouthful of steak and chew it …at a time. You will benefit most from accomplishing the one thing you have set your mind to. Ben F. said, “Perform without fail what you resolve.” Sounds like a good maxim.
Later, for the variety and bigger/more modern stuff that you might find increasingly appealing, do a whole nuther idea.
These locos are your millstones, and have been for some time. Maybe you must abandon the old, and launch in another direction…as you have surmised above.
Chip, what ,really, is eating at you? Yer at loose ends, me boy.
Well, if you must know, I’ve launched a holistic nutrition and wellness practice and you know the saying “Physician heal thyself.” Part of that has to do with emotional aspects of which one of mine seems to be letting go. So I let go of my grandiose basement idea. Compressed the space so my wfe could have painting storage and now have a smaller space to house my train endevors. Except I have two spaces. If I just had the one, I’d go old west–a larger version of Rock Ridge and Train City. But I’ve already built an entire room to house the Sawmill complex.
Either way, I have to let go of my treasures from the past–stuff I once loved and enjoyed but don’t use any more. Sprots equipment, backpacking stuff–and the biggy, my cowboy guns.