I am new to this list and hope that any of you out there can help me.
I am building a walk-around layout, approx. 16’ by 18’ depicting a coastal Maine town on one side and a mountain on the other. I had originally planned a logging operation for the mountain, comprised of a shay logging train runnng to a sawmill with log pond, sawdust burner, etc. Now that the benchwork, roadbed and subroadbed are in I am having serious doubts about whether I have enough room for a convincing depiction of the logging operation. This would be sited in one of the “blobs” of the layout and could use a mountain covering track running along the back side of the blob. I wonder if I could replace this with a small granite quarry instead. Would I have enough room to fit either of these enterprises into a space of about 3-4 feet? I am willing to compromise between realism and practicality. I am more interested in screnery and model building than operations, but I want to have a workable industry to use too.
On another matter, as I said I have built the roadbed and added subroadbed. The roadbed is 4" wide instead of the 2 1/2" roadbed that seems more typical. I did this to give myself more flexibility when laying track. Question: will this wider roadbed take up too much room when it comes time to put in buildings? I want to do a wharf scene with maritime buinesses, dock, water, seagulls, etc., but wonder if have cut the roadbed too large. The track plan is extremely simple, a dogbone with a small yard and a few sidings and the branch going to the mountain industry.
Thanks for your attention and I look forward to your comments.
You could do either one in that area, but not both credibly IMO. I also think that the quarry would fit better, as squeezing logging in will be tight…and I’m assuming HO and that your mill is elsewhere in both cases, necessitating RR haulage to get the raw materials to it. I just don’t see squeezing in logging and a sawmill. A quarry and a mill could work, but then would be so close together there’s little need for RR haulage, which is what we’re here for.
Nothing wrong with wide roadbed. You can just cover it with scenery in most cases, although you may need to trim it in special cases…or simply run the track to one side. I do this myself, as it makes getting loading docks and other trackside structures leveled easier. The extra space can be used for scenery, an access road, signal boxes, etc.
The “problem” with such wide roadbed is if it restricts your ability to model the surrounding landforms, including drainage ditches and under-the-track culverts, that are lower than track level and often very near the bottom of elevated roadbed. In my own case, the city area involved landforms that were essentially level with the rail roadbed, so wider roadbed there makes total sense. Just out of town however the roadbed was elevated due to a very old creekbed which was crossed with a bridge, and such wide roadbed there would look out of place.
Dave Nelson
As to the quarry vs logging issue, the common element to both is that the rail intensive portions are as a rule just a small portion of the overall operation - which does not necessarily have to be modeled on the layout. In some ways a quarry is easier to model “offsite” because it is below the normal ground level. Even the far edge of your benchwork could represent the upper rim of your quarry.
You don’t specify era, but I would suggest the quarry. Much of the eastern forest was heavily logged even before the advent of railways. Bill Gove has written a number of books about rail logging operations in that part of the nation and this tends to be the early application of railroad logging - using small rod engines before geared logging steam was plentiful. (Yes, there are exceptions, but I am speaking of the general appearance of most of these lines if one pages through the various Bill Gove books.)
There can still be plenty of switching with a quarry line, as the marble (?) is taken to a finishing shop. Sawmills and affiliated structures (planing mill, power house, lumber storage, kilns, etc.) can take up a great deal of space. The stone could certainly be loaded directly onto ships for movement to big city construction sites. Images from the book Two Feet to the Quarries might help with inspiration.
Here’s a peek at how I built my quarry with styrofoam. I used 2" because I had it on hand. 1" thick should work even better. The whole thing is removable.
The derricks are from the Walthers quarry mill kit and not currently in stock. Here’s a peek way down in the quarry hole…
Seems like a quarry would be an excellent option for a front of layout scene. Model the top works and a few layers of stone, then the rest of it is somewhere down in the aisle.
Thanks to everyone for the responses to my queries. I think a granite quarry would go well with the scenery I had planned and give my Shay plenty to do. I enjoyed reading your comments and especially viewing your pictures. Thanks again.
In most cases that extra wide roadbed should not be any issue. For adjacent buildings it may actually help as the building and it’s elevation to the surroundings needs to be raised anyway. Any spots that it interferes w/ a ballast profile, just cut it away at an angle.
