how many of you have a powerplant on your layout ? im am thinking about building one . or will it take up to much space?
Alot depends on what era you plan to model, and how you want to have your coal unloaded (bottom-dump hoppers -vs- rotary dumper). A rotary dumper would take up a few extra sq. ft. of layout space, but they weren’t really used much until the 1960’s AFAIK…
Power plants come in many different shapes and sizes. There are some “small” natural gas power plants. I installed some LAN cabling in one in San Antonio. It pretty much sat in a residential area. There is also a fairly small coal burning plant that sits almost in downtown Colorado Springs. It sits inside a loop of track for the coal hoppers. There appears to be a small rotary dump.
it can be big or small…what you will need to model isa water tower, boilers, and pumps, a generator, a power transmission yard, and high voltage power lines that leave the plant to points on the power grid is the norm…i’m going to do a power plant too,…i have all the stuff to build it but it’s a few years away when i actually do it…chuck
If you are considering a large utility powerplant, it is going to eat up lots of space, even a compressed version. Unless you want to make that the main feature of your layout, I wouldn’t attempt it. A small town or industrial power plant is doable. If you really want to model a large plant that will take lots of loads a day, I would consider modeling a portion of it with the remainder theoretically being beyone the backdrop or in your aisle. I went another route. I bought a commercial backdrop of a large power plant. I have background buildings in front of it and an industrial branch that disappears behind the buildings, heading for the plant. The plan is to push coal loads onto the hidden branch once per operating session. This will give the illusion of running traffic to the power plant. At the end of the session I will retrieve the hopper cars, lift out the coal loads and return them. During the next operating session, the empties will be picked up and new loads stored. That is the plan anyway since I haven’t put this phase into my operations plan yet. It all hinges on how reliably I can move cars onto the hidden branch, couple and uncouple the hopper cars. I have liftout access to this track but if it turns out I need to manually fetch those cars on a regular basis, it might be more trouble than it is worth.
The sly trick is to put the big space-eaters (boilers, cooling towers, transformer yard, minor mountail of coal) on the backdrop in the form of photos, and just model the unloading facility. The power plant that inspired this comment is just south of I-40 near Joseph City, AZ, and a model of it would easily fill a 2-car garage in HO.
Another option is to have the two tracks to the power plant (loads in, empties out) disappear behind a hill, and ‘model’ the plant with two or three huge smokestacks and a transmission line.
My other major local power plant is Hoover Dam. Anyone up for modeling that?
Yes, I’m going to model it in G scale and dam up the creek behind my house.
Power plants do not have to be HUGE. Look at the old power plant here in Baltimore’s inner harbor. (It’s the 4 smoke stacks on the right)
http://www.hendersonspier.com/whybaltimore/ (First picture of ESPN ZONE and Barnes & Noble was old power plant)
http://external.bcpl.lib.md.us/hcdo/cfdocs/photopage.cfm?id=10238
Walther’s power plant kit isn’t exactly huge either. A rather simple one track in to dump coal in a bin. That’s it.
Do you mean a power plant or a power transfer station ? Two different animals and huge difference in space needed.
I plan on having a transfer station on my layout as it resides right next to a station I’m going to model. Overall it takes about 1/3 again the amount of space the station requires.
I work at a power plant so if you need details as to what is included on site I can probably help. I’m sure you could find lots of arial views on the internet too. As to how big, it will depend on what type of plant you’re modeling and how much compression you’ll be using.
Do you want to model the plant… see above… or the trains going to/from it?
If it’s the latter you can just have the track lead heading to the plant and you don’t even need a photo background.
Someone’s already mentioned period and size of facility. Earlier periods you could have a steam loco or 1st generation diesel switching a few hoppers in to a state hospital or penitentiary to feed their power and heating boilers. Modern stuff you can have the latest generation AC power multipled in strings hauling masses of rotary dump cars… very impressive even in N scale.
I was looking for a power plant to place on my shelf railroad. At the time there was nothing available. I decided to do it myself. I purchased foam core sheets from a art supply store and brick sheets from Walthers.
There was a coal burning steam generating power plant where I live and using that as a starting point, I designed my idea of what it should look like. It is large, but I wanted it to be the major theme of my layout. It takes up eight to ten feet, when you consider the the total length of the coal burning boiler building, generator building, conveyors, coal piles and double ended ladder tracks feeding coal to the dump sites as well as storage tracks. The windows are long and rectangular w/ four large Walthers smoke stacks situated in front of the boiler building and slightly elevated off the ground on a concrete pad. Since it did not have to be modeled with four sides, it gives the illusion that it is expansive, while being only four to five inches deep. The trick to making it look right is in the details that are added to the outside. Out buildings, water tanks for hold steam water are place on the side or near the front. I have used railings and catwalks to give detail. The conveyors from Walthers flank one side, while a Walthers substation kit flank the other. High tension power lines from Walthers are also included. The tracks which are situated in front of the plant ,give a massiveness to the building. According, I have probably several hundred hours into building it. Ironically, the power plant kit from Korber Models that I initially wanted, is now available from Walthers.
I was going to include a power plant on my switching layout until I bought the kit and realized how big it is. It’s the modern style from Walthers. I’ll probably put it on E-bay for disposal.