Tell me About Your Switching Layout

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I was wondering how many of you out there have small switching layouts. Would like to know what your layout is like, What is the “theme”,? What kind of operations? Is it feeelanced or after a particular prototype? What kind of rolling stock and motive power? Are the industries varied or is there just one large one that it services? Any other comments that you can add would also be interesting.

Briefly, my layout is freelanced and it is ‘L’ shaped, 9’ x 2’ along one wall, 5’ x 1’ along the other. It is loosely placed somewhere in northwestern Ohio between Sandusky and Toledo, set in the 1970’s. It will serve seven industries. This, as in a lot of cities in Ohio, has a strong agricultural as well as industrial base. The focal industry, however, is the Mud Hen Brewery (fictitious, named after the minor league Toledo Mud Hens baseball team!), which is the largest industry on the layout. Operations are push-pull, (therefore cabooses required!), with interchange with two Class 1 railroads: The Chessie System and the Erie Lackawanna, so cars are basically brought in by the Class 1 road and dropped onto an interchange track. The “switching” railroad (the Toledo Erie Central or TEC) ) then sorts and spots cars into their respective industries. The TEC’s “roster” consists of an SW-9 and a caboose. Staging will be on a removable cassette (3 tracks, 30" long).

2

Mine is yet to be. have a fairly large HO layout, small N gauge traction for Christmas & a “G”(20.3/1) outside. In the planning is an On30 along a wall & possibly around the corner. I have 2 locos & a couple of cars along with some scratch building supplies for more cars…will keep you posted. jerry

3

I’m planning a freelanced shortline (Port Able Railway) for a tabletop that is only a small 66 inch by 45 inch loop of track with 2 customers, a manufacturing company and a distributor. The era will be the summer of 1979 and it will be primarily run with switchers.

4

I am in the process of building my switching layout. i have one section 8 foot x 18 inches already built with track laid. The front portion has a “harbor” look to it with a retaining wall and water feature. The industries will be back drop buildings, of which I have a few. The surface is foam board painted gray to represent a dock/wharf. My freelance railroad, the “Green Island Terminal Railroad” will do all the switching, using various road switchers, geeps, and industrial switchers, purchased from fallen flags. There will be interchange with the Canadian Pacific, and CSX. Setting will be upstate New York. None of the industries will be prototypes, but I plan to have a small micro-brewery, a plant that bags salt, and my largest industry will either receive municipal solid waste in MSW containers for incineration, or they will receive truck loads of MSW and ship it out by containers. I also have plans for a mid size scrap recycling center, and a plastic pellet transfer/holding facility.

One of the other “legs” will also be 18 inches wide and probably 8 feet long. I may just use this as a yard, but am unsure yet. The last “leg” will be 18 inches wide by about 14 feet in length.

So, after all is said and done it will be kind of a J shape layout, in our upstairs living room. (We don’t use it a a living room, so its open for just about anything).

That’s my vision.

5

Hi, Mine is a mid to late 1940s era switching layout but does have a mainline around the room via two other levels.

It’s a Terminal/transfer/belt line. There are 3 yards. A large division/classification yard, an under a future

city industrial yard (mostly two long team tracks and a drill track and finally a turning wye with a track for a coach yard and interchange.

It’s built for operations sessions (some day) and everyone will meet up at a junction/diamond crossing.

So far all stub ended sidings which makes for a switching puzzle of sorts.

The basic plan is a thrice around oval with the main yard on the lowest level, the industrial yard and wye on the 2nd level and the city on top of the industrial yard.

The theme is to pluck cars from interchange tracks for “live” staging. The whole layout is based on a Port Theme on Black River. All goods originate from the Port Terminal and Interchanges so far.

I’m just now finishing the bench work and track laying/wiring with the assistance of a good friend.

My layout is proto-freelanced. It’s based on Black River Junction between Seattle and Tacoma, WA where the MIlwaukee Road, UP, NP and GN all met up. This is a “what if” layout. If a small city had grown around the junction.

When the Seattle Ship Canal was dug it completely dried up Black River. There was a large Native American community along it’s banks and it was done in by the draining of the river.

My layout’s plan is close to the actual track layout there but not prototypical.

Up to now it’s been steam only, but I just succumbed to the purchase of two HH660s with sound.

I figured they’d be safer for backing under the city than my Russian Decapod switchers pushing their tenders all the time.

Like many steam dudes, it was hard to go to diesel but the newer sound systems have swung me over.

I’ve been a boat mechanic in a past life and it was time for some diesel burble and whine :wink:

6

Oh yeah forgot the dimensions: 8’X17.5’ Not exactly a shelf layout size but similar in concept.

7

Tom,

I’m modeling an early 40s New York Central (NYC) steam/diesel servicing facility and freight station. I’ll be moving ash, coal, sand, and diesel fuel to and from the facility and have have two small yards to accomplish this task: One in the servicing area and one out on the mainline. I’ll shuttle empties to the mainline yard for pickup and full cars to the service tracks. The only incoming empties will be gondolas for the ash pit/conveyor.

Industries for supplying the servicing facility - i.e. coal, sand, and diesel fuel - will have to be off the layout. I’ll also run a smattering of reefers, boxcars, and stock cars.

As far as motive power, I have a number of NYC switchers:

  • (1) 0-8-0
  • (1) HH600 - Undecorated, to be decorated in '39 scheme
  • (1) S1
  • (1) SW1
  • (1) VO-660
  • (1) VO-1000

I’ll also have some larger NYC steamers:

  • (3) 2-8-2 Mikes
  • (2) 4-6-4 Hudsons
  • (1) 4-8-4 Niagara

And I have a few late 40s/early 50s switchers that I might run on occasion when I want to “bump up” the era slightly.

  • (1) HH600
  • (1) SW9
  • (3) H10-44/H12-44 - (2) undecorated, to be decorated as B&A #9116 & #9117
  • (2) RS3

Itinerant crews will bunk down/lay over in the company house next to the freightmaster’s house. The diner is open for feeding crews and any local folks needing to grab a bite to eat. You can see more of my modest

8

This is my layout:

M-K & Eastern RR

9

My layout is located in our laundry room (I have “trackage rights” above the washer and the dryer!) and it is approximately 8’ by 6’ by 8’, “U” shaped. I have nine “industries” or warehouses, and one two-track team track, as well as a 3 track “receiving yard.” The industries include a scrap yard, a fruit and vegetable warehouse, a meat wholesaler, an oil dealer, a commodies warehouse, an electronics warehouse, a Sears appliance warehouse, and the largest industry “Peerless Can and Container.” The Team track serves a lumber dealer as well. The layout is set in 1964 (the year I entered the Army) and is supposedly in north-east New Jersey near New York City. The railroad is formally called “Terminal Railroad of New Jersey,” or more commonly “Jersey Terminal” and is jointly owned by CNJ and B&O. I have seven engines, all painted for TRNJ except an HH600 still lettered for CNJ (The Atlas paint job was simply to nice to cover up!). The other engines are: VO 1000 (Stewart), H10-44 (Walthers), S-2 (Atlas), SW-7 (BLI), and two Bachman 44 tonners. All are DCC with sound (all but two with LokSound decoders, including the H10-44, which formerly had a QSI dedoder which I removed and replaced for better low-speed capability). I have 228 freight cars, with about 30-35 on the layout at any given time. The others are stored on shelves below the layout and switched out each session as needed. I operated with car-cards and a typical session takes about two “real” hours, using a 4:1 fask clock. My layout is scenicked and the track, code 83, has been “gleamed,” making operation very good. There is enough variety with the various industries not all be switched at the same time to make operation interesting. I have had this layout up and running for seven years now and presently am upgrading buildings and detailing and weathering rolling stock. The Jersey theme is a left-over from my living in NJ for many years before moving Sout

10

My Slate Creek is more of a modern design based on several locations…

Promise not to laugh to hard and I will show you a rough draft.

11

It’s 1956-7 in Minneapolis, Great Northern diesel switchers (EMD NW2s or Alco RS3s) are serving a small handful of industries along the freelanced 32nd Street, on the west bank of the Mississippi, as well as setting out or picking up cars bound for or coming from the Mississippi River Barge Terminal.

Once in blue moon, during the fall grain rush, when pretty much everything that can move has been pressed into service, you might even see the occasional 2-8-0 steam engine - now getting rarer and rarer, as the railroad is getting ever closer to being fully dieselized - this year will likely be the last year of steam locomotives in this area.

The track diagram for the 32nd street tracks looks like this:

Traffic consists mostly of 40’ box cars, carrying a variety of goods.

Empty boxcars to be loaded with boxes of manufactured good at the Globe Union Manufacturing company, and shipped westwards to customers in the small towns in Western and Northern Minnesota, North Dakota and Eastern Monana.

The Land O’Lakes plant receives loaded boxcars of packaging materials, salt, machinery, empty boxcars to be loaded with dry milk powder and other non-refrigerated dairy products, and empty Reefers to be loaded with boxes of butter.

The barge terminal setout track is where cars for the barge terminal job is left. L

12

Mine represents a proto free lanced Southern branch set in the late 50s serving a typical small town in the Carolinas. The basic track plan concept started from Sperandeo’s San Jacinto (great plan and theme BTW) that has morphed a bit to fit the room and southeastern theme. Current motive power is a NW2 with mostly 40 foot box and a few others for variety. The largest industry is the cotton mill, just as in many towns of the region, with typical small town businesses – fuel oil, lumber yard, station/team track. As I grow the track plan, I’ll add other typical industries – an oil mill (processed cotton seeds into cotton oil and fertilizer), a peach shed (South Carolina was a very heavy peach producer, the peach rush with ice’d referigerator cars harkens back to the citrus theme of Sperandeo’s original track plan), and pulpwood. These industries were all very big in the rural Carolinas. My goal is not to model a specific town, but to create the “I’ve been there before, but just can’t place it” feeling.

13

My layout is 16 inches wide and 23 feet long it sits along one wall of my garage . The layout is fictional located along Florida’s North Gulf Coast . It interchanges with the Southern RR and the L&N it is set in the early 1970’s . It features 2 Passenger depots and a power plant , fruit packers , a furniture plant , a milling plant , a seafood packer and a ocean port with a small oil depot , and ware houses , there is a small yard and a small engine terminal . My locomotives range from a 060 steam locomotive and a Alco/ EMD hybrid , as well as assorted locomotives from the L&N and Southern . It is currently DC but I hope to convert to DCC someday . The track work is complete except for the staging yard that I plan to work on this next winter. So far it is a blast to operate and the scenery is coming along nicely .

14

The Allegheny, Mercer, and Lake Erie Bloomfield Junction is currently a 9’x5’ L with a 6’x1’ tail for staging. It was originally planned to be 9x14 but a move cut the space available by 2/3rds. Operating largely on ex-B&O trackage, the AM&LE serves the upper Strip District, Bloomfield, and Lawrenceville directly northeast of downtown Pittsburgh. It has exactly two industries in the Bloomfield Junction area. The Pittsburgh Brewing Company has three spurs (one for corn syrup, one for inbound ingredients, and one for outbound reefers) and a segment of the old second main for storage. The other is the Duquesne Press. One track long enough for a pair of boxcars for inbound paper and a spot on the other side of the building for outbound bales of scrap paper. A single GP40-2 is available to move the daily train from the NS Island Ave yard on the Northside.

Almost everything is at least based on a real thing. CP Bloom is an almost ancient junction between the PRR-B&O/NS-CSX/NS-AVR. The AM&LE is a cobbled together reality wherein the Bessemer & Lake Erie, Buffalo & Pittsburgh, and Allegheny Valley Railroad are all one big happy family. The AVR really does make a daily run out to Island Ave from CP Bloom. At one point, the Pittsburgh Brewery had several spurs at Bloom off of the B&O.

15

Sounds like an ambitious project, Capt. Grimek! I, too was raised up along the Erie Lackawanna, Deleware Division. Where were you located!

16

My switching layout is 2x3 feet N scale, includes 4 turnouts and a loop of tr5ack—which is NOT a mainline, but a “circulation loop.”

Theme is the supply tracks “aboard” a Naval Air Station for blimps. Era of the prototype was actually early 1940s but my main layout is 1957, and I operate as if the base were still active- even nthough there are no more Nazi submarines to chase.

One track is an imagined connection out the base gate to the Santa Fe mainline. It connects clockwise off the loop, as does a spur to a Naval Stores warehouse, with an unloading spot for helium gas… Two spurs connect counterclockwise. One serves an open-storage loading area and an end ramp for vehicles on flatcars, the other a fuel dump- Naval Air equivalent of what in civilian life would be a bulk petroleum dealer.

Equipment for the layout is one U S Navy diesel switcher, Navy helium tankcars, Navy aviation gas tankcars (a Navy blimp pilot told me the Rolls Royce blimp engines used the same fuel as airplanes), 50 foot 1 1/2 door PS-1 Navy boxcars equipped for munitions, and flatcars and gondolas for heacvy equipment and vehicles.

I designed this layout as a minimum size loop switching layout, with then original idea of it being at a paper mill, but I thought paper mills are done a lot. Navy blimp base railroads modeled less frequently.

17

Soon, i’ll begin construction of my Ojai Branch with specific liberties taking as to customer base, I have a total area of 80 X 40 to work with, but don’t envision the layout occupying more the 60% of the space, benchwork will be kept narrow and minimal except were necessary to accomidate the one switching district i’m planning.

Period is 1920 to 1925, citrus packing houses and related industries are the theme, scale is S, this layout will only require a dozen turnouts, no need for yards or passing sidings on my one train a day branch operation, a two track stagging yard representing the SP interchange is all I require!

Dave

18

Leighant,

I’m loving the trackplan. I’m thinking that it may tanslate into a nice HO switching layout that’s an industrial park located in a former ship yard. What’s your minimum radius?

19

I don’t know if mine qualifies as “small”–maybe it’s medium: About 14 by 21 feet, around three walls on shelves about 18-30 inches wide–with an 8’ peninsula in the middle of the room. But switching is the emphasis; no continuous running/mainline. Currently working on laying trackwork. The layout is built to Proto 87 standards.

The theme is a Missouri Pacific branchline in Texas in 1980-1985. Closely based on the branch that went to my hometown, but with a few changes here and there to enhance operations. Typical East Texas industries: wood products (finished lumber and woodchips), bricks, pulpwood, oilfield suppliers (frac sand, chemicals, equipment), aggregates, and a feed/fertilizer mill at the end of the line.One train per day, five or six days per week, depending on traffic. Local comes in with a pair of diesels and a caboose, switches the industries, and heads out. Pretty basic, but endlessly enjoyable to watch and operate. I don’t really like complexity.

Motive power is MoPac GP15s, GP38-2s, U23Bs and B23-7s. When I operate on the “early” side of my timeframe (1980/81), I can also include GP18s and a former Rock Island GP38-2 in a “patched out” scheme (MoPac purchased several of these in the early 80s.) Later timeframe operations permit me to include MoPac canary yellow units and a Western Pacific GP40 (many were sent to East Texas in 1984.) So plenty of variety for what is essentially a rural, backwoods branchline.

20

My layout is N scale, using “train set” sectional track just so that I knew it could be built by someone else in small size. 9 3/4" radius. That would probably translate into 18 inch radius for HO, and a 40 inch by 60 inch layout, maybe smaller…

One more picture: the base administration building.