Hello, I’d like to start by introducing myself. I’m Nate, from middle TN and I’m 27 years old. Back when I was in middle school my parents and I moved to a new house in the town where I’m from. A shortline railroad called “Tennessee Southern” ran right through our back yard, which sparked my interest in trains. I asked for a train set one Christmas (I was about 13) and thats when I started model railroading. I started with a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood on a couple of saw horses. I fixed the track straight to the plywood with no roadbed. I knew noothing about how an actual railroad opperated so my layout was unorganized and I was always changing it.
When I turned 16, I got my first vehicle and started chasing girls, so the model railroad scene started to fade away in my interests. It wasnt long before my Dad was taking my layout down and boxing it all up because I never even looked at it anymore.
Now I’m married, have my own house, am in the process of getting on with CSX Transportation out of Nashville and I miss playing with my toy trains! I would like to get back into model railroading, however this time I am much more mature and would like to take more time building and run my model railroad like an actual shortline company would. I think I need to start with a small and simple layout with only 2 to 3 switches. I’d like to base it in the 50s or 60s, in a small town in the southeast (somewhere in TN). I have a lot to learn about the industries I should choose, the type of locomotives and the type of frieght cars for that era. I’ve been thinking about logging, livestock, grains or something that would fit a small town scene. Anway, I’ll quit jabbering and let you give me some tips and suggestions. Thank you all for your
It is good that you started talking before you started buying. You don’t know how much you just saved yourself. [swg]
A place to start might be my Beginner’s Guide to Layout Design. It will take you about 10 minutes and maybe get you thinking in the right direction and asking the right questions. You can click to it in my signature.
I good place to start if you are serious about doing a small switching layout on the Tennessee Southern is to go to your local library, Look up the Sanborn Insurance maps and see what businesses were actually serviced by them in the 1950’s and 60’s. Here is a clip from one in my town in 1939.
From that I was able to design this layout.
You may also find out a lot just from googling the Tennessee Southern. Someone has probably done a lot of your research for you.
You are considering HO or N scale I presume, Your chosen era will allow you to mix steam with diesel, and with 40 ft. rolling stock, you can probably get away with 18"-20" radius curves for HO modeling. Get some books on starting a layout, wiring, and scenery. What are the limitations and obstructions in your planned layout area ? Where are the doors, windows, etc.? Post a diagram of the room available, so that we can make some reasonable choices. Do you plan on an around the room, an island, doughnut, or what shape layout ? Bob Hahn
Well, the TN Southern hasnt been around that long, it was started somewhere in the 80s. I though about creating a fictional shortline RR of my own, along with the town being fictional as well, just set somewhere in the southeast. Thanks for the guide, I will defenitely check it out!
Welcome to the forums and back to the hobby. As noted earlier take your time and do some reading before you build. I would however pick up a switcher, power supply (Preferably DCC)and a small oval of EZ track and play a little. Also check out you tube and search for DCC sound loco’s. It’s amazing how far the hobby has come.
DCC is not hard to figure out. What you need to know is that instead of controlling the track, you control the individual locomotive.
There are three basic components involved: A power supply, a command station and a decoder in the locomotive. The power supply and the command station are often combined.
The power supply feeds a constant supply of power to the track.
The command station sends a signal through the track to the locomotive.
The decoder receives the signal and distributes the power from the track to the locomotive to run.
Each locomotive has a separate address so it is controlled independently.
In other words, you can have many locomotives running independently of each other and because of this, do just about anything in your model, that a real railroad can do.
Pretty much covered. Consider it a basic computer network. The track is the buss, and the loco’s and controllers are nodes on the network. Any controller can control any loco individually or together, including direction lighting and if equipped, sound.
Love the name, know the song well. Myself as well as you got into the hobby some time ago. I have been hanging out with the gang here for a while now and find that research and planning is almost as fun as running trains. I like most jumped in and built my first layout with little knowledge of what I was doing. I have however learned a lot from the gang here on the forum. And I welcome you to the forums.
Welcome to the forums and back to model railroading.
Most of it has been said. I would reinforce the idea READ and then ask more questions. Things will change as you progress, don’t be afraid to change things, many here have changed complete layouts as their skills have progressed or desires changed. Some just rebuild parts as they see fit. You have the beginnings, era and locale, now to fine tune, pratice and ENJOY.
Your comments suggest you want a layout that’s realistic. Your new job will likely teach you more about how to create a minature railroad than a lot of other methods will, so pay attention to what happens around you. How tracks are laid out, the positioning of structures, railroad operations, etc. IMO, the most important thing you’ll learn about designing, building, and operating a minature railroad is that layouts that tend to be the simplest, tend to be the most realistic, in that real railroads strive to do things as simple (efficient) as possible. Overly complicated trackwork (even an abundance of runaround sidings), rock cuts, retaining walls, bridges, etc. were all expensive to build, and real railroads, especially shortlines, tried to avoid building those items as much as possible. There is also a line between simple and boring so gauge your interests well enough to determine what aspect of railroading you most want to mode
Welcome to the forums. Sounds like you have a pretty clear idea about what you want, and that what you want to do is very doable in most homes, even those where you don’t have a huge basement you can fill with an enormous model railroad.
Are you thinking something like a fairly narrow (e.g. less than 18" deep) point-to-point shelf layout along one or two walls of a bedroom, modeling a single town, rather than the classic “running in an oval on a table” type of layout? Or is continuous run important to you?
Some potensially inspiring stuff for ideas about point-to-point type of shelf switching layouts:
If you are pretty really short of real estate for a layout, Carl Arendt has a a web site of micro layout track plans (typically less than 4 square feet): http://www.carendt.com
British modeler Adrian Wyman also has an interesting web site about small switching layout and switching puzzles, which may or may not be interesting to you as background information: http://www.wymann.info/ShuntingPuzzles/
Welcome to the forum, Rocky Top. Though I live in the Chattanooga area, I have a lot of experience with Middle TN, and another RR, the Tennessee Central, which had its tracks very close to the men’s dorms at Tennessee Tech when I was there in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I also remember that RR runing trains down to McMinnville, the area I picked up nursery supplies and to Rockwood and Harriman where it connected to the Southern RR.
There is an excellent musuem in Nashville and one in Cookeville also and both have a lot of maps and other data about the TC. A web site is at http://www.tcry.org/ and will offer some more information. The TC was primarily a coal hauler, but also served many other shippers and at one time had passenger service tied into the IC in Nashville. I can still remember the wine and growl of the RS-1’s and RS-2’s as they lugged long trains up that grade beside the dorm.
Thank Yall for all the tips and info, I’ll take all the help I can get. I’m gonna check out some of the links everyone has given me, I think you’ve defenitely steered me in the right direction to get started with my layout.
“Yall”… spoken like a true Southern gentleman. I keep the forums as home page tabs on my browser. There is even a forum for DCC. Welcome back to the hobby, and enjoy it!
