The Model Railroader magazine published a John Armstrong trackplan article, the HO M&PS, in the December 1959 issue. In its November and December 2004 issues, articles by Robert L. Warren “re-cycled” the M&PS design, in the guise of an N scale granger layout (Rock Island and Minneapolis & St Louis, November 2004) and HO Appalachins layout (Western Maryland, December 2004).
Unfortunately, the publication of the November 2004 issue coincided with the announcement of John Armstrong’s death, a blow to me as a lifelong fan of his work. The M&PS was the second ever Armstrong plan I had seen. The first was the SP inspired Oakland / Bay Area plan published in the 1958 25th anniversary edition of MR. To an impressionable teenager these plans opened up the possibilities of melding prototype situations into manageable spaces. Whilst the SP effort was way beyond practical consideration, the M&PS looked achievable, and reflected what little I knew about US transcontinental railroads in the northwest, mainly gleaned from “boys own” picture books borrowed from the local library. Over the years, the M&PS made cameo appearances in Armstrong’s track planning books, and every so often these prompted a scrounge for my well-thumbed copy of the December 1959 MR for a re-read. I usually learned something new with each re-read, and it was with some anticipation that I saw the first of Warren’s recycling articles.
Perhaps because of familiarity with the original, there are some things which I noted on reading Warren’s articles. I hope the following comments serve to better understand the original, and that the suggestions about the “spin-offs” are helpful.
Critique of the spin-offs
Size, shape, relocatability, access
The original was designed to be dismantled and relocated. Careful thought about this requirement determined the layout size and shape and how it occupied the room space.
The original track plan was built in the 60’s(slightly larger with minimum 30" radius), for a club layout in Shakopee, MN. It was located on the 3rd floor of the only 3 story building in town at that time! The first floor has Andy’s Hobbies, and the second floor had an apartment. The club was named the Progress Valley Model Railroad Club, and the engines/cars were lettered ‘Progress Valley’. The diesel paint scheme was similar to the C&NW scheme, with reefer gray substituted for the green, and diesel dark green substituted for yellow. The sides of the engines had ‘speed letter’ Progress Valley in gold. The club was on the layout tour of the 1969 NMRA convention in Mpls, and lasted until about 1980 when the building was sold.
Operation/control was originally with cab control from an elevated ‘tower’ located in the upper left corner of the track plan. Eventually, yard cabs were installed and ‘walk-around’ cab control was extended around the layout(but never covered all of the layout). Track started out with hand laid code 100, but migrated to Shinohara code 100 as time went on. I never thought that the ‘operation’ was real great on the layout due to the small staging capacity, and the lack of any good knowledge of how a real railroad operated. But it was a good club layout, and was the model railroad ‘social hangout’ of the time.
About 2 years ago we had a ‘reunion’ of old club members at a local water hole. At that time only 3 member had passed away. We brought surviving equipment, pictures, and even some old super 8 movies of the layout in operation to the event. It is nice to see some of these famous track plans get built,
Limited storage capacity and lack of provision for staging was a “feature” of 1950s designs. Probably limited rolling stock availability did not require it. A functional, good looking layout was an achievement. Operational modelling was in its infancy. Bob Warren’s recycle remedied the storage problem.
M&PS as published had a couple of operational challenges: both sides of the mountain grades on single track with helpers turning at Lofty would have created track occupancy problems; running a peddler one end to the other would have been a beast… check it out on the plan.
My guess is it would have been too “busy” for a club layout… both on the tracks and in the aisles.
Thanks for letting us know about the Progress Valley.
The M&SP layout is a good one so I thought I’d revive this thread about it.
I photocopied the M&PS plan a couple of years ago for inclusion my “Good Ideas Worth Considering” binder. Finally retired, I’m now in a position to start building my dream layout and thought the M&SP would make an interesting coal mining branch line. (My layout is free-lanced but loosely based on the SP.)
My large coal mine (based on the one shown on the bottom of pg 51 of the Jan '68 isue of MR, and also copied for my binder) will replace the original McComb/British Columbia Junction penninsula* and the mine branch will connect to the main layout at Rowlesburg.**
The trackage exiting the left side of Tunnel No 1 will connect to the mine, and the Seattle loop will be eliminated.
**The trackage out the top of Rowlesburg will be eliminated as well as the track to McComb. The asile from Coketon to McComb will not have any track or scenery and will serve onlty as a maintenance access.
Mike Chandler wrote about his version of John Armstrong’s Montana and Puget Sound in Layout Design Journal#57 published by the Layout Design SIG (back issues are available). He did away with the loops below the visible deck, turning the same basic footprint into a point-to-point shortline with the two end point interchange yards sharing a single engine service facility at the “McComb” end. Mike also enlarged the layout overall, increasing the minimum radius.