Thank you Chuck.
Yours would be a perfect “wisdom” I was hoping some experienced folks add!
I may not that experienced now, but far more experienced and knowledgeable than when I joined this forum 2 years ago.
I hope if I respond that I am gentle also, I try to be.
Remember, it’s a HOBBY, and every HOBBY should be FUN to the person HOBBYING! Each person will enjoy it his own way!
I couldn’t agree more Chuck. As a re-beginner after not modelling for 20 years, the very first thing I did was to buy as many beginners guides and READ as much as I could on the internet. There IS soooo much to absorb when you first start out that it is quite overwhelming. BUT, with a little patience and a lot of research I was able to create a track plan with XTrkCad and begin to design my first layout. This was after months and months of reading magazines and internet forums such as this along with hitting as many train shows as I could get to.
I say my first for two reas
Your approach sounds sensible to me. Read up on the subject first. Look at what others have done. Think about what you want to end up with. Make a plan. Then start building. Accept that the result probably won’t be perfect the first time. Take note of what works well and what works less well. Plan to do better next time.
To me, it seems that the core challenges with quite a few new modellers (including myself) is twofold:
The first challenge is to make the new modeller mentally accept that TTT - Things Take Time. Many of us at least initially wants to skip over the “boring” work needed to get from here to there, and just leap straight to the end result.
It takes a while for most new modellers to fully accept that we all need to spend quite a bit of our own time - either on reading, researching and planning before we starts building, or on experimenting while building and redoing things that doesn’t work well enough afterwards. Or spending time both on planning before you start building and on reevaluating & redoing things afterwards [:D]
You can have someone else design a track plan for you. You can get someone else to build a layout for you. But even if you do that, you still will need to invest enough of your own time to figure out what you want and spell out clear specifications of what you want. Th
3T:
But I think we, as experienced modelers, tend to forget that usually we had to play around with trains a while /before/ we really knew what we wanted. Most people, when starting, just want Trains, and if you want them to make a list of requirements, it usually ends up being Pretty Much Everything. So I don’t think we should point that out all the time. Sometimes the best thing to do is throw up a flat table and throw down some snap track, because an hour at any throttle beats two in any armchair. Except that really comfy old armchair that your wife wants you to throw out. Zzzzz.
Waking up…back on topic…yes. At least I missed that thing, sort of. Originally I had my oval layout designed for the longest maximum run between termini - two facing opposite-hand switches, relatively close together, branching off. Then I realized that, although I actually was going from pt A to pt B, they were both physically close, and the long trip seemed silly. So I added another town diagonally opposite, and considered it to be in the middle of the route, and the layout suddenly made better sense. I guess the lesson learned is that the trip doesn’t just have to be relatively logical in concept, it has to “feel” that way too.
I agree. But when the newby askes for help with his trackplan, we should try and remind them what the sidings and industries are really for. I sort of think they know in a limited way, but but don’t necessarily see the big picture of what the reason is for the RR to exist. By knowing this, the big picture, I feel that it will help them plan a layout that may be more that a roundy-round type. After all, they have put a siding or two on their layout, so lets try and help them make it as close to the real thing as we can. It’s sort of like not seeing the forrest for the trees.
Loathar, no problems mate. I don’t feel dissed at all. But I’m still suspecting you’ve not given ops a real test drive if you’ve only done the club thing. Very few clubs are into prototype operation. And even fewer have gotten to refined operation. Rather than insisting on taking your own equipment to run, I’d suggest looking for a ‘complete’ layout that really operates (like Joe Fugate’s). As a newbie you’ll likely be assigned the job of engineer and paired with an experience conductor who can tell you what to do when you get confused or forget. For me ops isn’t about the equipment used (as long as the engines run reliably and the cars stay on the track), instead it’s about the interactions between trains and their crews. Refined operating layouts spend as much time ‘weathering’ and ‘super-detailing’ their ops systems as many of us do ‘weathering’ and ‘super-detailing’ our structures and rolling stock.
If after a session or two like this you still don’t see what the fuss is about then you’ll be able to return to your baliwick knowing that you’re not missing out on a different facet of the hobby that might
trackplan - n. (from model railroads) - an arrangement of tracks for a model railroad.
With that simple definition, a simple oval fits the description. But is it really a trackplan? Isn’t it intuitive that a newcomer would know to close the loop so that he/she can avoid the train having to reserve itself? Would a newcomer not figure this out even if they had not seen similar arrangements and adopted the configuration into their “worldview” of model trains?
In the past 10 or so posts, we have revolved around what the term and its host question from a newcomer is really asking. Will a newcomer want to know how to close an oval? If they use the term trackplan, do they understand all that it represents? Is it our ethic, here, to explain all that a trackplan can be if anyone uses the term in a request for help? If not, could it be?
How should we orient ourselves to the term? What should we agree a typical newcomer means when he/she uses the term in a first-ever request for help in getting one underway?
I’m not meaning to be facetious here. I think we have some variance as to what help we should offer a newcomer, whether that be encouraging them to continue to learn without spending money that may soon be wasted, or encouraging them to go ahead and make some purchases, learn from that and subsequent playing experience, and then come back and we’ll see what we can do.
I think they get lots of mixed messages here, some friendly, some not, some indifferent, some not. It would be nice, for the sake of the forum and all it represents, to have at least a semi-packaged approach to helping newbies get the most of their time, interest, and resources. Hopefully, that would also translate into a fair bit of fun. [:)]
Well said Charlie! I have never been to a full operating session, just ones where it was me and the owner running trains. I’ve tried to hold some of my own, but I can never get enough operators, and my layout runs horribly anyway… most of them aren’t really that fun because of dirty track/derailing issues.[banghead]
Once upon a time (well, two years ago anyway) when I was part of a club they were supposed to hold operating sessions, which was one of the main reasons I joined, but they never really happened… they were supposed to be every other month, and at $15 a month membership wasn’t really worth it…
I’d love to be part of a regular crew on a good railroad (I’d even pay the $20 required to buy my own headset that many people require) but I don’t really know of any in the area… [sigh]
I think that this discussion thread has identified a potentially major issue for many people.
Having recently come back to model railroading as a hobby, and having built (at least almost completed) an 8’x4’ version of Ian Rice’s Lilliput Logger, I discovered, that although, scenically, it looks good, I discovered that it lacks any extensive operating potential (not least because there is very limited sidings capacity).
I then started looking at extending the layout by adding “wings” off both side, resulting in a large “W” shaped layout, with the wings extending round the room, the original 4x8 acting as the center of the “W”, and the wings providing space (16" - 24 wide), one side 14ft long and the other 16’ft, both with “blobs” on the ends to provide for loops for continuous runni
Hi Everyone,
Since we’re on track planning, i have a flat table layout, to where i can run 3 trains and do some switching, there is a pretty neet item that i would like to add to my layout, and that is a hump yard, i don’t know if anyone has ever built a working one, i would like to research this i’ve watched railroading on tv and seen how they work, need to find books or someone out there that has built one that can send me drawings on how to build one in HO scale, don’t know if i’m even on the right track, so if anyone out there can help, would be greatful,
steam618lover1
Boatman, welcome aboard [#welcome] from a long ago blue water sailor (fireman-watertender aboard a modified C-1.)
I can understand not wanting everything to be shipped in box cars - but in the '30s, almost everything WAS shipped in box cars - even the loose Portland cement used to build the Hoover Dam. (That project was the ultimate concrete plant feeder.) Flats would have carried machinery, heavy timber, preassembled fuel and water tanks… Logs were usually carried on ordinary flat cars or ‘skeleton’ flats (flatcar frames without flooring,) but might be carried in gondolas. The purpose-built wood chip and cordwood carriers weren’t developed until later, nor were covered hoppers for cement (the problem with leakproof drop door seals weren’t solved until the late '40s.) Especially in the West, drop-bottom gons were more common than hoppers in coal service, and household heating lump coal was shipped in, you guessed it, box cars.
If you have a car ferry slip AND an interchange track, you can route cars the length of your railroad from one to the other. That way, you can have cars, and open-car loads, that don’t have a modeled destination. (On my own railway auto racks, container flats and all-door cars fitted with specialized loading gear shuttle from up staging to down staging with nothing but an engine change - steam to catenary, or vice versa - between.)
The best way to develop a realistic ‘industrial base’ is to stick a pin in a map, then research what was actually there during the time you want to model. Check out some Spacemouse posts - that’s what he did with his home town. I did the same thing, a continent and an ocean away.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Most of the people who say “I want a hump yard” have NO idea what the size of those things are or what they do.
They are the aircraft carriers or battleships of the railroad world. They are huge production facilities designed to switch hundreds, if not thousands, of cars a day. A typical prototype hump yard is expected to process 1500-2500 cars a day.
So if your layout classifies 300-1000 cars a session, then it might be useful to have a hump yard. If not then it probably won’t be useful to have a hump yard.
If all you run is 3 trains then there is no way a hump yard is anywhere close to prototypical.
If you want to go to the trouble of building a hump yard, go for the gusto. Just realize that anything a typical modle hump yard can do a flat switching yard can do almost as fast with a lot less trouble and technology.
Dave H.
Humpyards? The effort and technical expertise to compensate for the laws of physics that don’t scale down to 87.1 to 1 or whatever so far appears to be beyond 99.999999 percent of us. My recommendation is to stick with a flat yard.
Mark
I beg to differ! (and am aware that we are off-topic)
We do selective compression in model railroading and if the prototypical yard you are wanting to model is, say, Lancaster Yard (now Centennial Yard), then compressing it without a hump (or bowl) is un-prototypical. Every single car pushed to the bowl represents those dozens that a real yard sends down the way.
Do a search on “hump yard” on this site and you will find some threads. An article, in the mid-to-late 90’s from N-Scale Magazine was something I recall as trying out using toothbrush fibers as nearly invisible retarders.
Crews
Mark,I hate to disagree but,it can be done…One HO club I am a member of has a working hump complete with a “puller crew”.
I know of another club that has a working hump.
The “retarders” are a series of air hoses controlled by a valve which is operated by the hump master all switches is “route line” for the bowl track by pressing the desired switch control for the track you need. A “master” hump operator can hump 12-15 cars a minute.
It still will be a bear to operate and build. The moral of the story is model a smaller facility.
OBTW, its not Centennial Yard, its now “Davidson Yard”.
Dave H.
Lets say an operating session is 4 hours long and the hump is occupied 50% of the time. That’s 120 minutes x 12 cars per minute = about 1400 cars switched per session. As I said in my original comments if you need to switch hundreds or thousands of cars per session, then a hump makes sense. If you only have to switch 60-200 cars pers session (three to ten 20 car trains) then a hump yard probably doesn’t make sense.
The dozens of people who want to put a hump yard in HO on 4x8 sheet of plywood are just doing it because they want to or don’t understand what it entails. There is no conceivable operating reason you NEED a hump yard to operate on a 4x8 layout. If you want to build one, go for the gusto, its your time and money. But on a small layout you will get more operation for your real estate and money with something smaller.
Dave H.
This has to be the topic of most value currently on this forum! Well thought out posts by all!
Again and again it comes back to having a theme or a purpose for the model railroad to exist, whether you have a backwater short line set in the 1930’s or a modern Class I. If a short line, then is it a logging pike with mountains, switchbacks and sawmills? If modern is it coal or intermodal? Or maybe something else, passenger service for example?
Each type of railroad requires different track arrangements in which to operate. A small logging pike would do well with a point to point track plan, one passing track, and a wye. A modern passenger line would be urban, two or three tracks at high speed and a loop to loop track plan (or dogbone). Try to run a passenger train on the logging pike and you are in immediate trouble.
THIS IS THE POINT OF THE ENTIRE POST!!! Nothing has been said about the intensity or complexity of operating sessions, which is left up to the builder of the model railroad to decide, but the TRACK PLAN MUST BE FORMED FROM A CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS, however sketchy it may be.
IF you must absolutely, positively have a hump yard, be aware that it will either have to have a big black boxful of electromechanical controls or a trained octopus for a humpmaster. It will also have a tendency to develop maintenance problems that won’t occur anywhere else on the railroad (unless you use pneumatic switch machines.)
I had thought of a hump yard - briefly - before succumbing to reality. My prototype flat-switched, for very valid reasons (not the least of them a lack of a suitable location in the bottom of a canyon.) So will I.
Discussing hump yards isn’t really [#offtopic]. A LOT of new modelers want them - not realizing just how big they are. Even a small gravity classification yard is an overload for all but garage and basement filling layouts. The problem is to be tactful about pointing out this painful fact.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Brakie, you found part of the 0.000001 of us capable and willing to construct/operate a model hump yard. I’m not suprised your examples were the result of group efforts.
I read an artcle about 45 years ago in MR about constructing a hump yard using air to act as retarders. So, I have known for decades it can be done.
Mark