I have notice the popularity growth of ISLs(Industrial Switching Layouts) over the last 4-5 years and thought it may be interesting to discuss these layouts.
Now then…I was discussing this with another local modeler at Col/San while railfanning last month and we thought this growth may be cause by the ever increasing prices since one can get by with less equipment and the less is more layout philosophy that seems to be gaining ground…
That could be.
However…
How about this instead?
How about modelers that doesn’t have the room for a large layout because they must share that spare room with the families computers or activities or just don’t have the room for a large layout?
Then how about those that is into minute scenery details? A ISL is the perfect layout for those modelers because they can spend hours adding the security fences,trash,weeds,detailed roads,mini industrial scenes,junk piles,dimpsy dumpsters etc…They could super detail their vehicles,interiors of their buildings in short have a museum quality layout.
Designing the ISL…Of course one should avoid any switching puzzle type design and to a degree some Inglenook designs…I firmly believe a well design ISL will be based on prototypical track arrangements-if space allows.
I fully agree but,I also remember when these types of layouts wasn’t respected and looked down on by “serious” layout planners and most modelers…Not so today.
I have been working on an ISL for the last 5 years. It was 10’ x 8’ x 2’ deep. I had the track laid and several buildings partly finished with a general concept of industry locations. Well recently I moved and I acquired an already built layout and was documenting it’s conversion to suit my needs. I still have the benchwork for the ISL and am planning to merge it with the loop layout I bought by putting a dogbone at the far end. That end will be mostly industrial.
The biggest drawback I see to just a switching layout is the inability to run continuous trains. Had I not moved I would have finished the ISL as originally planned but I think the new plan will serve my needs better.
I’m retiring shortly and planning my first “permanent” layout. It is an ISL I guess in that I don’t have a loop or dogbone. I am planning an around the room shelf layout that will cover most of the walls of a 9 x 15 room. My choice of an ISL has nothing to do with either cost or space. I just think they are more fun. My model railroad experience thus far has been belonging to two different HO modular clubs and another club that has a large layout that focuses almost exclusively on continuous running. To me, that gets old after awhile.
I’m been lucky to develop a friend who is a former Penn Central conductor. He has an O scale 2 rail ISL layout. I really enjoy going over there and having our 2 man operating sessions. I’m not knocking those who have continuous running, I just like focusing on all of the switching options when I run trains.
Small switching layouts have been around for decades. Referring to them as “Industrial” switching layouts leaves out some interesting prototypes and many other aspects of their design and is uneccessarily limiting, IMHO.
In my view, call them what they are, small switching layouts: it’s just clearer. Do we really need another acronym for any reason other than to be pointlessly proprietary about something that has existed for 60 years or more?
Nothing new here that I can see, and I design many small switching layouts for clients and have built a few.
Try the 50s,60s, and 70s…Check your layout books from those eras as well.
While there are indeed several styles switching layouts the ISL narrows it down to a industrial switching layout and not the other types to include passenger terminal switching layouts.
I started this topic as a open discussion concerning ISLs in modern times and how they are becoming popular…
Well, I must admit that by themselves they don’t interest me enough to be the “whole” layout.
But, I do see them as an important element of a larger layout. I model a large Class I in the east during the transition era. I avoid putting industries directly along the mainline. Urban industrial rail service is often provided via belt lines or seperate industrial lines the feed into yards.
Even along mainlines between major cities in the east, industries are often in groups and have “branch” sidings from which the industrial tracks go to the individual industries, keeping switching off the busy mainline.
You mean like Westcott’s “Switchmann’s Nightmare” in 1956 and the dozens of others from that era and beyond? I’ve studied dozens of the track plan books published in those eras and it simply isn’t correct that small switching layouts weren’t featured in the press – which was your premise.
Why limit it so much? There are other kinds of switching layouts besides industrial and passenger.
Apparently not too open, since you are quick to disagree with slightly differing opinions.
Bottom line, small switching layouts have been around a long time, have been popular, and continue to be popular.
Small switching layouts can be interesting in lots of different forms and don’t need any narrowing of scope (and certainly not any special moniker, IMHO).
I agree that ISL’s as opposed to general/generic switching layouts have become more popular. I think this is partly due to the many small railroads that have been spun off by the class I lines as they drop unprofitable branch lines. This makes them seem more prototypical than something like Switchman’s Nightmare or other puzzle layouts from years gone by.
While money and space certainly contribute to their popularity, I think time is a big factor. The work week has been getting longer for many folks either through increased working hours or increased commuting times or both. This leaves less time for hobbies. An ISL can be up and running fairly quickly and then for those who like scratch building, kit building/bashing, super detailing, scenery, structures there is time for that as well.
It’s also a way to explore different scales, eras, or themes without a major commitment of time, space, and money.
I would tend to agree that switching layouts have been increasing in popularity. That’s not saying they’re new, just gaining in popularity relative to other styles of layout design. If that is true many of the OP’s premises are logical explanations for the change.
To that list I would add the improved slow speed performance of many readily available models. Switching operations are a slow motion ballet. The advent of skew wound motors and electronic speed control in reasonably priced RTR locomotives have made it a lot easier for the masses to enjoy the subtleties of switching operations.
I don’t know whether industrial layouts have been around for a long time or not. What I do know is for the space they provide more to do than roundy-rounders.
I think that when you start you might build a layout where your run laps, but when you tire of seeing the same train run by every 10-15 seconds, the idea of actually doing something like operations becomes a lt more appealing.
Just about anything you say or write about the history of layout design is doomed to be a gross over simplification.
So, at the risk of grossly over simplifying, to my mind the local industrial switching layout was for some time regarded as the “small” layout for the space deprived modeler versus the large, continuous run layout (i.e., some variant on an oval) where the emphasis was on getting a mainline train from terminal to terminal, even if it was the same terminal (and of course the Delta Lines, a classic continuous run layout in theory, featured plenty of industrial switching).
So it was a way to keep your hand in but not the ultimate goal. What seems really new and modern is the advent of the truly large ISL.
I think it is also worth pointing out that the really good automatic couplers that also could uncouple readily, and slower speed engines, played a big role. An industrial switching layout with Baker, Mantua, pre-magnetic Kadees, and horn hooks would be frustrating.
Whit Towers and Steve King both had small switching layouts, both of them were “serious” modelers and both layouts dated from the 60’s or 70’s. G Harold Geissel had a switching layout based on a more rural part of PA set in the 1920’s. I started a ISL based on an Atlas plan back in about 1972. Gordon Odegard had an N Scale MILW ISL. MR had plans and designs for the Kingsbury Branch and and a project railroad the Kinnikinic Railway and Dock Co. back in the 1970’s or maybe 1980’s.
I, since my layout is still unfunded, am still looking at 12’ x 2’ switching layouts for ideas for the frontage of my one day, someday, maybe if ever, 20’ x 6’ HO layout. The overall plan is to have both continuous running and some operational fun. As for the name of “switching layouts” what I’ve seen in MR is they seem to be called shelf layouts mostly.
I would look at layouts such as Chuck Hitchcock’s Argentine Division, Jim Senese’s Kansas City Terminal Railroad, and even David Barrow’s “Minimalist” Cat Mountain and Santa Fe, as examples of what has become popular over the last several years. Lance Mindheim’s Miami Downtwon Spur also comes to mind. What, IMHO, sets these layouts apart from previous switching layouts is the fact that while they concentrate on industrial switching, classification yards, and perhaps a staging yard, they do so in a space large enough to “normally” be used for a model railroad that would have included “long” mainline ru
That is the difference I see also, but I attribute it to a general trend in the size of the equipment and a general trend towards being more prototypical. I see it more of a “rising tide lifts all boats” kinda thing. There is a general trend towards fewer, longer spurs.
Ironically, David Barrow has rebuilt his ISL layout into something more “conventional”.
I see ISL as a “cool” acronym for something that has been around for decades (a shelf switching layout), just as a “domino” is used for open grid sectional/modular benchwork, that has also been around for decades. A bright shiny new acronym always makes the old seem new.