I recently ran across a plan in the back of track planning for realistic operation, of the St. Clair South western RR does anyone have aditional info about this plan or MRR?
IIRC, this plan was devised by John Armstrong for his book (Track Planning for Realistic Operation, as oscaletrains noted). As I read John’s description of the plan, I don’t believe he was offering it as a ready-to-build design, but rather as an example of the thought process he felt should go into any freelance layout design. That’s not to say that some modeler out there didn’t take hold of John’s plan and build it as designed, but frankly, I doubt they ever did.
If they had, I think John would be a little disappointed. I believe his intent was that his readers would be able to follow the same steps to conceive their own freelanced “prototype”, then design their own layout based on that “prototype”.
But, if someone did build the StCSW, then I’d like to hear about it too. I felt that the StCSW concept was well thought out and would have made a great “prototype” for a layout.
Tom
I always enjoyed reading John’s articles on layout design because his orientation was towards the incorporation of one’s theme into one’s available space. If I recall that St. Clair Southwestern layout from his Track Planning . . . . . book was designed around fitting an automobile plant–a rather extensive structure to be sure–into a given space. I do not recall ever having seen that design utilized directly, at least not under that particular name, although it could have inspired a derivitive under another name.
His designs were translated into practical layouts, however; I believe it was RMC that did an impressive photo feature on a layout that was identified as a modification of a John Armstrong design from the '50s; low and behold I was thumbing through a mid-50s MR and there, staring up at me from the printed page, was this RMC layout.
the layout its self is what I belevied to be well designed, a great yard, lots of through trains, and it is not over-done. I hope to at least try to build this plan as a freelanced branch of the Pere Marquette, possibly a branch that had enough profits to keep the PM from C&O take over.
if you had to guess, what do you think the turnout frog #'s are?