I grew up living next to a section of the CPR mainline in Central Ontario - the tracks are a stone’s throw from my parents’ home. Our family business is even closer - literally across the street from - the same section of track.
This is the CPR’s mainline, and it’s busy. Also, a passing siding begins/ends here as well. (Apparently it is one of the longest sidings in Canada. I can’t verify that as fact, but that’s what I’ve been told.)
Needless to say there are a lot of “meets” here. A train will pull up to the end of the siding, stop, and wait (Southbound). It’s common to see the through train (Northbound) barrel through only a couple of minutes after, and then the train waiting in the siding heads on its way. There is also a vehicle crossing just to the south of where the siding starts and sometimes I see northbound trains waiting on the south side of the crossing, until a southbound train either arrives on the main or has pulled into the siding itself. Sometimes the train on the mainline heading southbound, has to wait on the main while a train enters the siding from the south. Other times, a train sits in the siding (engines sometimes running, sometimes stopped) for hours - sometimes even 1-2 days - before heading on its way. Taxis are often seen picking up and dropping off crew members here.
Regardless of exactly how it’s happening - there is a lot of action here.
On top of this, there is also a shorter siding on the siding - it’s a lower code rail, and there is no ballast. The tops of the rails are just above the roadway level that parallels all of this, surrounded by dirt and overgrown with weeds in the summer months. It is probably about 500 ft long. Usually it is home to work crews that begin and finish their days there, but other times a trai
Welcome to the forums. You make many railfanning modelers jealous with your location so near a busy track. Best I ever could do was visit my grandmother’s sister and hope a train or two would pass across the river in the daylight. (Several would go through at night, freights don’t show up real good in the dark.)
I would agree and around the room shelf (donut) is your best bet for running long, through trains. I might suggest a double ended yard. If you wish to have the wye, it could be in the area of the yard, with the leg serving some small industries on a penninsula. 11’ would give you plenty of space for a 2’ shelf around the room, a 2’ penninsula and 30" asiles around the penninsula. If you choose to have a narrower shelf on either or both sides and/or the pennisula would widen your asiles slightly.
Even an 18" shelf will give you room to have a mainline, siding or two and some industries, especially if you don’t mind using background type buildings.
One of my favorite layouts is Bill Schneider’s HO NYO&W. I think it might be of interest to you. His space is a bit longer than you’re working with, but his layout has similar basic geometry and shares your goals of high detail and prototype fidelity despite heavy compression. Check out his extensive page: http://home.comcast.net/~oandw/plan.htm
Thanks to all for your replies. I think I may have written a bit too much though, in my description of the prototype - there have been many viewings but only a handful of replies. That’s what you get for being a little too wordy.
I never really gave N scale much thought but I am now realizing that I will almost certainly be giving N scale a try in the future. It would be a great way to model the long trains that we see here without taking up a ton of space. Today alone, there were probably 6 long trains (I’m guessing 100+ cars), mostly made up of well cars carrying containers. This was a relatively “quiet” day - some days, I’m sure we see over 20 trains in a 24-hr period.
Does anyone know how to look up traffic statistics? I’d be curious to know what trains have passed, and also, which ones are scheduled to pass in the coming days.
My space is somewhat similar (10’x18’ total), and if I were to do a layout set in “today”, I would definitely go for N scale. The minimum curve radii (plus easements) for that long equipment would eat up quite a bit of your space in HO.
As for figuring out prototype traffic,I think your best bet would be to find an online railfan forum that covers your area and do some reading/posting. There’s a pretty good one for CN on Yahoo, not sure about CPR.
EDIT: Did a Yahoo search and found this one for CPR, probably worth checking out
My suggestion is to design the town you want on a small a foot print as you can manage on roughly the front half of your benchwork. Put a low backdrop, view divider behind the visible scene and fill the back half of the layout with as many double ended staging yards as you can fit. Operations will be bringing trains out of staging, doing their thing at your station and then going back into staging. This is a very popular theme in Europe, particularly the UK. By double ending the staging if your area runs 12 coal trains a day you can have a couple coal trains and then recycle them as you need a coal train.
By using a low backdrop, the staging is hidden from a normal viewer, but if you stand on a low stool you can easily see or reach over the backdrop.
One other thing, the aerial/satellite imagery found at Bing and Google maps is a valuable tool for track planning, especially for modern layouts. If you post the name of the town/city you’re looking at modelling, we could take a look along the line and find some “modelgenic” trackage. Several posters here enjoy the exercise. [:)]
And don’t worry about providing writing too much information - it helps clarify your vision and provide more focus on any feedback people give you.
Unless the layout is a classification yard, with the limited space available, I’d recommend not having one. Have trains appear/disappear from/into staging.
Funny you mentioned the idea of aerial maps - I’ve already looked into that, using online maps provided by our district. It has helped me determine orientation of track as well as track patterns of areas I would like to model but haven’t seen in person.
I am located in Bala, Ontario, Canada. It is a town of about 500 people and is surrounded by water, as you will see from the maps. The CPR line should be easy to spot - look for 5 bridges (2 over land, 3 over water), a vehicle crossing and 3 (for a very short time) parallel tracks. You will see a small paved street and a lumber yard just east of the 3 parallel tracks. Overall I want to recreate the trackage from the southwest to the northwest of town. I don’t have room to model the whole town and anticipate modeling only those features within a hundred feet (real life) divided amongst either side of the track. I also want to have the track run at an angle to the edge of the layout - I hear that running it parallel isn’t a great idea.
In addition, I would like to model my yard after the prototype’s yard located to the north, in Mactier, Ontario. (this is the track that I haven’t seen in person - I believe it is only between 10 and 15 track miles away)
You will also see the CNR line a little to the east
So and take your car and travel the odd 15 miles and take a look yourself.
Your initial idea to go for a donut sounds right; let us see your ideas first in stead of asking others.
You could start with making a drawing of your space, with all obstacles drawn in. If you want some to do all the thinking for you pay the 2000 bucks and mail e.g. Lance Mindheim or Byron Henderson.
This is certainly a scenic area, one that would keep a bridge & water modeler happy for some time. I think you’ve picked the two best scenes in the immediate area.
I would strongly consider N scale to try to work in all of those bridges. HO scale might compress the distance between them too much for them to look realistic. If I were modeling Bala, these are some scenes I would consider:
From your posts, it sounds like you would be more on the “railfan running” side of the spectrum (vs. switching), and the emphasis of your operations would be meets and through trains. Though there is some potential for switching that team track you mentioned.
Thanks to all posters on this thread, your input is much appreciated.
After reading everyone’s thoughts and crunching a few numbers, I have realized that N scale might be the best option for the kind of railroading I desire in the space available.
I will post a sketch (trackplan, layout area, obstacles) in the near future.
