I’d like to build a layout that will conquer my spare bedroom that’s never used.
I currently am doing this in N if that helps.
I’m looking for a way to have a ‘loop’ to simulate the Super Chief’s run from a city, into a mountain region, and back, but I’d also like a few secondary areas that I could play with some freight trains on. Like a branch line or two that could have an industry and an area in the ‘city’ to bring stuff too.
One of the things I can’t find a picture of is how did a train that long (A/B Unit, eight cars) load up at a station? Were the terminals that long? or did you get on the first few cars and walk the rest of the way back? I’ve been looking at Wikipedia and googling but can’t find any photographs of the stations to get an idea of what could be done on the small scale.
Basically yes, you got on at certain points in the train (coaches, sleepers). You wouldn’t get on or off every car. They might even assign you to a car based on where you were going. It might be commone to have platforms several cars long (6-10) at large stations. OBTW if you have a station stop on the Super Chief it will be a fairly large station.
Have you tried Google Maps or Terraserver (terraserver.microsoft.com)? The hard part is finding an active station with a platform.
Remember the station platform doesn’t have to be covered, it just has to be a flat paved area the people can walk on and you can push a baggage cart on. If space is an issue, I would make the platform 3 times as long as the station. Then just stop is so the baggage car is on one end and let the engines and the rear of the train hang past the platform.
Major big-city stations [Grand Central and Penn Station in New York, St. Louis Union Station, Los Angeles, the Oakland Mole (where San Francisco-bound passengers de-trained)…] were built with platforms long enough for 12-16 car trains. Lesser stations might have shorter platforms, especially if constrained by roads crossing the tracks, but frequently had very long open platforms and only a very short covered area adjacent to or across the front of the station building.
As far as combining passenger operations with freight, the first article on car card and waybill freight car routing included a statement to the effect that, “Passenger trains are held one real minute at each station stop, to give freight trains time to run from station to station without fouling the passenger trains’ times.” That article was written 47 years ago.
I combine passenger and freight operations on a railroad that follows the employee timetable for a real secondary route of the Japan National Railways (with names changed to protect the guilty.) In some ways, this is the easiest technique (if the freights are scheduled, and not run as extras.) In others, it’s not (finding the Perfect Prototype, and the necessary information, can be a bear!) Either way, it’s an advanced technique, not something to jump into feet first.
When you say “loop”, I notice you include the wording, “from…and back”, so I assume you are talking about a reversing loop. A realistic model of Super Chief is going to have a bunch of cars, as you indicate, and the cars will be full length, 80 to 85 feet. Take a BIG reverse loop.
Most of the places the Super Chief ran, it did not run through and then come back the other way a few minutes later. It is on a 39 hour transcontinental trip. If it come back, that is, pass through the scene in the opposite direction, it would not be the same set of equipment but a different usually identical set. And it would not then sit in the station and end its run, unless you are modeling Chicago or Los Angeles.
If I wanted to model Santa Fe Super Chief, I would model somewhere along the line, some city or town big enough for a stop but not impossibly big to model. I would have an oval continuous loop layout (NOT a reverse loop) with hidden layover that represents everything east and west of my modeled scene. Super Chief would come out from staging, run, make a station stop and then continue into staging.
Santa Fe had several trains similar to though not identical to Super Chief. Such as “The Chief”. You might use the same set of equipment to represent a run of that train. Pezrhaps have at least two staging tracks dedicated to passenger trains, and have a train set up to run opposite direction for variety and to give suggestion of bidirectional traffic. You might want to have a different appearing train such as San Francisco Chief with full dome car, or the Scout with distinctive markings on upgraded heavyweights, or even the Fast Mail & Express, with m
That is very un-Superchief like. You could run the Superchief into the mountains hid it there for a while and then pretend like it is the opposite facing train that left the other end of the line yesterday.
By branch line do you mean industrial sidings? Usually a single branch line is much larger than the largest model railroads could simulate. Taking the Santa Fe as an example, they had a “branch” that ran from Wichita Kansas to Pratt. It had 10 towns on it and was about 90 miles long. Another example is the Scott City branch from Great Bend Kansas to Scott City.
The short answer is that it depends on the station and the operating practice of the railroad. Only the largest stations (St. Louis, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago)could fit a whole train in the station or at the station passenger pavilion. For normal sized “eg small” stations the Santa Fe conductors would choose a position on the train and move all disembarking passengers to that location. They would then stop with that car right in front of the station. A Santa Fe conductor/engineer who made passengers walk to the station did not get very good performance ratings. Of course then again, the Super Chief didn’t stop very many places. If you are looking for a Santa Fe train that would stop at almost any staion consider the Grand Canyon Limited, the Fast Mail Express, Scout, or Ranger.
P.S. What era of a Superchief are you running. 1936