As some of you know by now, my girlfriend and I are modeling the P&LE Monongahela Branch… we are trying to stay as close to the prototype as possible, but we are taking some liberties to make it work a little bit better for a model railroad operations standpoint…
Some background…
Monongahela Branch traces the east bank of the Monongahela river from McKeesport, PA (just south of pittsburgh) to Brownsville, PA… at McKeesport it met up with the two other branches of the P&LE… at Brownsville it met up with the Monongahela Rail Road (at first joint owned by P&LE and PRR, then P&LE, PRR and B&O during the time we are modeling (early 1970’s))…
here is the layout, and some comments…
some notes.
A. The L shaped region is what we are currently modeling, the bottom section is the next to be added (belle vernon, pa to the north with monesson,pa to follow in the third section)
B. Eventually the Monongahela River will be modeled to the inside of the horseshoe in a seperate 9" “molding” to be detatchable for possible transportation (likewise eaach piece of the layout is a 2’ x 2’ square for ease of move if necessary (we are in our early 20’s and might move quite a bit)
C. Fayette City has a history of two medium sized mines, the Naomi and the Fayette City, the Naomi was located north of town, and the Fayette City Mine south of the town… both were located essentially on the main line of track and did not exist on a spur like we are modeling, we decided to breaak from the prototype for the Fayette City mine to allow us to do some operations and to add the Fayette City Furniture company on the other branch of the spur… 100% historically correct, no… but the railroad must be fun right? below is an image of the fayette city mine as seen from across the mon in allenport
D. The streets and
I am doing a little with the Buffalo and Pittsburgh. My club has some of the location you are talking about, but they are not serious about attention to detail.
The main thing that I see lacking in your design it that you have no runaround. This means that your engine will only be able to switch one end of you layout.
Thanks for the comment… i have the runaround at the end of the L (upper right of the drawing), but i am lacking one in belle vernon, i have been debating how, where i want to put it so i have left it out of the drawing [connect the two offshoots together to make a run around? (takes up less space, but less convenient) or add a run around prior to the spur? (takes up more space, but is more convenient)]
Can you work in any staging track(s)? Many people are happy with removing and placing cars by hand but I’m always concerned about knocking details off or dropping them, etc.
yeah its an idea… but we’ve thought we’d rather save the space to use for scenery etc… also as we are going to expand this to a full layout (we are doing it piece by piece)… there will be room for staging to be added on the 3rd or 4th piece
you are right. the turnaround that i have won’t fit a full train… right now it will hold about 5 cars and the loco. which is fine for starters (just the L shaped region) as we will just be shuffling cars around and moving them here and there… but the belle vernon addition could probably use a retooling… perhaps the elimination of the town region and shifting the glass factory down towards the end to allow a more extensive yard with a full length passing lane… ill have to sketch that up real quick to get an idea of how that might look…
I like this plan better. I’m worried about a couple things. I’m worried that you can’t reach the track in the upper left corner. Figure on an active reach of about 30 inches.
I’m worried that your turnouts have a lot of angle. Although you may be able to get away with it in your drawing here, you may disappointed later. I’d suggest getting a template, or better yet, download XtraCAD a free layout package. It will take a couple of evenings of tutorials to get it, but it is a very powerful layout program once you do get it. As you said you plan on expanding. Learn the software now and save a lot of aggravation.
I think you’ll be surprised how different you layout will look from what you have drawn. It’s important to know what buildings will fit and what won’t. In the case of your drawing above, that’s where I think you might be disappointed.
It is a reach… But as i said i’ve built the bench work and laid and ballasted the track in the upper “L”… and with the use of a step stool i can reach back there no problem…
point taken… i just sketched this out by hand… but i see what you mean… my runs in the bottom section may be shorter then i have them … so this could change how it looks slightly…
yeah i think my main over all concern is the town… the track we can make work and be flexible with the final out come… problem with the town is we don’t know what size buildings we want to use… so the town might get cut off and we’ll have to trim a building here and there along the back edge to make it fit… but thats ok i guess… we do want the illusion that the town continues off the back of the layout there… so how many buildings we can cram on the streets and how far we can extend is really up in the air until we get right down to selecting buildings and measuring their footprints…
so here is the layout as it exists now… or as the bench work and track exists now… so we are going for a modular-like building process so the one complaint about the short track at the end of the run-around will be addressed with a next piece of the puzzle… right now the layout can hold 8+ hopper in the mine tracks with a gp38-2 rolling down with 4 more hoppers in tow… switch out four full hoppers and push in the 4 empties and then take the four full ones back to the “yard”
below is an image of the fayette city mine as seen from across the mon in allenport
