yea. All fancy mainliners look away! Here i will explain the art of mountain terrain for early ore and logging railroads. If you do this let me warn you. depending on how drastic you make your track, your locomotives you can run will be limited to logging locomotives.
build your mountain first.
logging Railroads never had the choice of the terrain. in modeling that shouldn’t be different. If your ground is somewhat uneven, that’s good. If it’s slightly slanted, that’s also good. On my first test, I simply took a 2 by 4 and glued on some shims then laid down a piece of code 100 track. The locomotive slowly swayed from side to side just as you would see in reality. You might also want to add some dirt and grass over the ties. A track as out of shape as logging line would not be maintained.
I would prefer to have completely reliable track. If necessary, it can be made to look kind of shabby with weathering and the application of scenic materials. Break off a few ties and let the rails run above them instead of on them, but keep the rails in gauge.
Keeping model trains on the rails is hard enough when you’re doing your best to lay perfect track.
A while back I was doing some experimenting with having a washed out track. I used foam and by simply putting indents in the foam with thumb, fist or a few other things, I quickly got the result I was looking for.
Laying crappy track was so easy it was not very rewarding, although, I was really happy with the end result. It reminded me of laying spline roadbed in that it was over so fast I felt short changed.[(-D]
This is completely reliable I can assure you. This is preferred for more flexible locomotives on cheap logging lines, not union pacific and there 4-8-4s.
My preference has always been to deal with the roadbed first. If it will support tracks, even undulating and rolling tracks, and work and look as intended, I find that building the mountain later works well. I would think that building a mountain first, and then fashioning roadbed later would be a lot of work. I suppose, though, that a person can do what he sets out to do and still have great results…it’s just the approach that should differ.
I installed “messy track” on an industrial spur. I handlaid Code 70. Since I fiddled with each rail individually, I don’t see how flex-track would work. Certainly not as well. If you haven’t handlaid, this would be a perfect opportunity, as you likely won’t be building any switches, anyway.
I built kinks and bends and up-and-downs, as I pleased. I tried to make it look “right”. Which it did, after some adjusting. Too little, and you won’t see it. Too much, and you might derail and/or make the track look “wrong”.
I learned:
Since our wheels have non-scale width treads, we can go quite wide on the gage–far more than NMRA standards. We can’t go too narrow, because of binding the flanges.
Don’t even think about being “messy” in switches. For what should be obvious reasons.
Curves could be a problem. Mine was mostly straight, with a fairly gentle curve.
The equipment you run on the trackage had better be designed for it. I stayed with 40’ and 50’ cars. I installed three-point suspension on the cars, as necessary. Some locomotives wouldn’t make it, but all you need is one: the assigned switcher. An 0-6-0 would likely be an ideal choice, maybe better than a diesel.
That layout is gone. But I’d go ahead and do it again, where appropriate.
The logging lines I reasearch in Northern WI., logs were layed down, and track was spiked to it. No ballast, no nothing. A lot of bark, etc., fell off the logs, and eventually filled in between the ties, somewhat.
One of the biggest, as far as being sprawled out, with twist and sharp turns, was the Roddis Line. They used 70 lb rail they aquired from the SOO, on the agreement that they only interchange with the SOO, and the SOO would get the rail back when the logging was done. About the only other cars used on the line besides log splines, were steam log loaders, and a few small box cars for crews and camp items. I’d have to go back to my research, to name the specific locos they used.
Any “trestles” or bridges were stacked up logs. Logging was done, SOO took back the track, right of ways grew shut.
I thought it would be really interesting to model something like that.
Some of the main line ROWs are used today for RTV trails.
With the proper scenery, I’ll bet that looks pretty cool. A lot closer to real life then some of our perfet layed track.
I had a spur to a scrap yard, used a scetion of flex that was reused 5,6 times. No kinks,but alot of bends and dips. I covered the ties with dirt,lots of weeds and trash, had to go slow,I liked it
Nothing shouts “fake” as a old urban industrial lead in perfect shape with shiny gray ballast. I do my utmost to emulate low maintenance track even in a older industrial park on my ISLs.
I have used a jeweler’s hammer to make dents in the rail,added ground foam and cinders to dark gray ballast,painted the ties a grayish color,cut slits in the ties,cut off some tie ends and glued small weeds between the rail to achieve the look I wanted. The switches escape the hammer but,not the weeds and nasty ballast…The switch points was ballast but,free of weeds and grass.
50-64’ cars waddled down the track with no derailments with my standard truck mounting technique of tighting the truck screw all the way down and back it off until the truck is tight but turns freely.I hate a car that “waves” has it goes down the track.
I made a really good worn out industrial spur on the “spare bedroom” version of the STRATTON AND GILLETTE" doing exactly that. I used three 0.030" shims under the ties to make the cars sway. It looked great.
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I also removed a few of the ties and replaced them with unattached ties glued in at about 10 degrees off parallel to make it look more beaten in.
I have one siding that has straight track and new ballast. It was just rebuilt after a boxcar derailed, fell over, and just missed the building.
I also have a section of the mainline that has fresh ballast under a switch. The switch has been rebuilt.
After WWII, the railroads were really beat up. Track maintenance had been deferred, and only repairs were done during WWII. So if you are modeling the 1950s, it’s possible to see new and old ballast and track in various places on the rail line.
Experimented with doing that with flex track. worked great. Cut out a bunch of ties, kilter a lot of them slightly. At this point everything is in gauge and still mainline ready. If you want yo go further you can shim here and there but you need to shim more than one tie and test as you go before you attach.
I think modeler Dave Davis has done quite a bit, as much as anyone I know of, to model less than wonderful “deferred maintenance” track, including having 39’ lengths of jointed rail with the joints being slightly depressed so a slow moving train has a slight waddle to it,. Great Model Railroads 2001 has an article on his “Davis Junction” layout (NOT by the way the famous Davis Junction that is several miles due north of Rochelle IL). The realistic appearance of track laid in that way is remarkable.
His old articles in Mainline Modeler of blessed memory show his techniques.
