I want to make either a small port or quarry on one end of a shelf layout.Which is easier to do? Im thinking a port might be better.Is there a good selection of dockside buildings and small ships for HO/OO? Is there any quick and easy way to build it?
thanks for all and any comments
Neither will be easy. A good port will need good ships and that will add to the effort. There was a great quarry article in MRR a couple months ago, and I need one of those. It will be a more unusual thing to model. Keep us posted.
One option for modeling a port without overwhelming the entire layout (seagoing ships are BIG!) is to use the aisle edge of the benchwork as the quay to which the ships are moored when in port. A couple of bollards and a line of split 1/8 inch dowels stained creosote brown will do it. The virtual “ship,” represented by a rack of waybills to be put in car cards, is in the aisleway.
In the past, there would be a long warehouse-type structure parallel to the water’s edge. Today, the entire area is paved. Likewise, traveling, revolving one-hook cranes are old technology, as are cargo nets filled with assorted boxes. Today, everything is containerized, which means container cranes that look like swing bridges on stilts (except that they don’t swing.) Also, there are no tracks in the immediate dockside area. Containers have to be inspected (for customs and security reasons) before being loaded on well cars, so the dockside pickups are made by specialized container carriers, usually not highway legal.
A steam-era port would receive and dispatch freight on flats and in boxcars and gons. Refrigerated cargo would move from ship to pre-iced reefers (or vice versa.) Present-day ports are far less interesting. The intermodal transfer yard is frequently a mile away from the nearest ship.
A quarry might ship cut stone blocks on flats or in gons, or crushed stone in hoppers or specialized ballast cars. An earlier era would also have seen drop-bottom gons. Incoming loads might arrive in box cars (spare parts and consumables for the machinery,) tank cars (fuel for the diesel-powered trucks and shovels) and the occasional machinery load (like a dismantled 300-ton truck on six flat cars, or a gyratory crusher on a six axle drop-center machinery flat.) The quarry itself will look much more interesting than a modern port, especially if you can animate some of the machinery.
Whichever you choose, lots of luck with your model
I would go for the quarry, but that is just my preference.
Ports are hard because ships are just so big. Water is not all that easy to get realistic. The same ship is always there. Hard to move unless you have some special technique to cover where it sits in the water after you move it out.
A quarry or small mine would take less space than a port. It would be easier to model rock than water (opinion). You can have trucks and excavators and bull dozers that are readily easily obtained. A siding for hoppers to take out the produce. A siding for flats or gons to bring in machinery used in the quarry.
Your choice, but I know where my money would be.[2c]
A mine would be cool, but i have never seen a mine on a layout.anyone got some links?
Im modeling the GWR (Gods Wonderful Railway,Great Way Round,Giant Waste of Resources ;oP ) on a shelf layout, so the port/mine cant really be larger than a standard piece of paper, not too complicated and not too expensive.Whats the best way to model a mine?
A “mine” would typically be modelled as the surface aspects only. If you look at the Walthers site (www.walthers.com) take a look at the “New River Mine” structure. This is fairly typical of the type of building you’d see for loading hopper cars. I’ve toyed with the idea of putting a coal mine “below ground” along the edge of my layout. The nice thing about that is that I don’t have to squeeze it in between tracks and surface scenery.
In the size you’re talking about for HO, you could put in a simple siding and a wharf. There isn’t going to be room for a significant ship, but there’s nothing wrong with a rowboat tied up alongside.
I think RMC had a feature on a layout with a quarry an issue or two back. I’ll try to find it when I get home.
I saw a wonderful mine scene in Pheonix this winter that was enetered in the NMRA contest. It was above and below ground with working lights and mechenism. I do not remember the builder, but he said he did not yet have a layout. It was scratch built and easily won best of show. It was past my building skills or patience. Maybe one of the AZ guys will remember that model and know who built it or have pics. A quarry will be easier, but not easy.
It isn’t necessary to model everything on a layout–one must merely suggest their presence. If you want to model a dock at one end of a layout (and yes, old-fashioned docks are probably more interesting and fun to model than modern container docks) then you actually don’t have to model any ships, especially on a shelf layout. Build a pier, with the front facing of the warehouse as a low-profile background building, so the tracks run out onto the dock. Set the scene using things to suggest that you’re near the ocean–maybe a couple of tall masts visible on the other side of the warehouse, a couple of seagulls on the roof, a fishing dinghy in the water at the base of a pier, a couple of old salts playing checkers at the old fisherman’s tavern right off the dock, and a few burly longshoremen lifting those character-filled nets filled with boxes with an old-fashioned crane. The idea is that the ship itself is just out of view–or the viewer is standing where the ship would be–or that there isn’t a ship in port at the moment.
A quarry could be modeled the same way–a quarry is generally a big hole in the ground, and it isn’t necessary to model the hole if you model the portion of the quarry that is nearest the railroad–typically a business office, some piles of gravel with some conveyors, loaders, trucks and big blocks of stone if it’s that sort of quarry.
Forgive my ignorance of God’s Wonderful Railway, but did the GWR do interchange with any of the Welsh two-foot slate quarry railroads? That would be a great way to add slate-quarry business without having to model the quarry: model an interchange point where slate is off-loaded from those charming little two-foot Welsh trains onto the GWR’s full-sized cars. Fairly simple–just model the interchange point and maybe a platform to facilitate things, perhaps a station–and you introduce an interesting bit of character into the line…of course, my knowledge of England’s railroads is supremely limited and the GWR may not have run anywhere near those lines…but it’s a thought. One could always substitute other regional narrow-gauge industrial railroads delivering their goods to the Big Boys whose lumbering behemoths couldn’t make the grade in narrow-gauge country.
actually, I Recently bought an 009 scale loco “Dolgoch” that works on the talyllyn slate railway. I believe the GWR was intended to join up to the talyllyn railway, but it never actually happened for some reason… so maybe I could model what could have been…Excellent Idea!!!
I suppose I could base the station on the Skarloey railway (Mid Sodor Railway(Talyllyn Railway)) station that meets up with the Sodor standard gauge line. I know it thomas but its still a cool layout.
Thanks a bunch Jetrock!!! [tup]
Boy,
We jumped back at least 70 years and across an ocean when you disclosed we were talking about GWR. Definitely a quarry or mine. Forget the bit about excavators and bull dozers that I wrote in an earlier post. Now you are talking about a passenger platform for the miners coming in by train.
If you go for an underground mine you can model the pit head winding gear (that is pretty big stuff in itself) and lots and lots of sidings with four wheel coal hoppers. Tank engines shunting them. Not a diesel to be seen.[:D]
Good luck and post some pics when you have made your layout. GWR and narrow gauge Welsh stuff. Cool, colour me green. Wish I had that sort of layout.[8D][^]
One thing to remember, a mine has massive equipment too, and olny needs and produces a few types of loads. If long drags of hoppers are what your into thats fine but ports offer any materal you could imagine, sherman tank? not a problem. Russian nucler sub? a little difficult but shure. twelve cat Ha 2700s ( I probally got that wrong)one heavy train, but It could happon.[:-,]
Sean?
Here is a link to one of the many Welsh Slate Quarry sites that I have found on Yahoo. Dave Sallery has done a wonderful job, and has many pictures to give you ideas.
(Yahoo Search, slate quarries) http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=slate+quarries&fr=FP-tab-web-t500&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8
http://www.penmorfa.com/Slate/
I am planning on useing real slate in my mountain area, and Dave’s great photographs, has given me many ideas. If I can figure out how to use his pictures as backdrops, I am going to ask his permission to use them on my layout.
Good Luck on your decision, I vote with Jetrock!
John, (A Welshman)