I am in the process of planning and building a new N scale layout, 16 x 12ft. My motive power roster includes Kato BNSF c44-9w, sd70ace, sd70mac and just over 300 Kato Bethgon Coal porters. My original concept was to model operations in the Powder River basin, Wyoming. That is until a friend brought around a couple of boxes of Kato Gunderson MAXI-IV Double Stack Cars. The double stack trains add a lot more interest to operations.
I would greatly appreciate it if anyone has any suggestions on areas or BNSF subdivisions that would feature large scale coal operations with intermodal traffic.
Certainly depends on what you mean by “large scale coal operations”, but you would e.g. see both BNSF coal trains (e.g. unit trains for coal fired power plants) and intermodal traffic e.g. in the midwest.
Coal and intermodal run on the BNSF along the Columbia River–more of the latter than the former. In 2005, I sat next to the tracks for a few days–plenty of intermodal, but no coal. Still, coal does run there, on occasion.