Once again, I appreciate the comments from all of you who posted here. The comments are loaded with with terrific insights, especially those from commenters green_elite_cab, BroadwayLion and Jetrock. I find all of you quite knowledgeable on the subject of modeling traction and model railroading in general.
Now I know, from reading all the comments, that traction modeling, while gaining some interest from current and new model railroaders, will never catch up with steam and diesel model railroading. But, I’m okay with that. There will always be enough scratch building, kit bashing kits and traction models out there to keep us traction modelers well supplied, satisfied and busy. It really wouldn’t matter much if traction is a distance third on the list of popularity. And green_elite_cab hit the nail on the head when describing how I would enjoy traction modeling. I do prefer to see trolleys in their environment, through little vignettes of life. I do find this very satisfying. Indeed it is not about the operations, it’s about the feel. And I also agree that this thought is in the minority. Watching a commuter train making frequent stops and starts - where the"tail end of the train leaves a station, it is often almost to the next one" would never bore me. I love traction. I don’t call myself “TractionNut” for nothing.
Recently, I re-acquired six (6) back issues of Model Railroader starting with November 1988 issue. The 6 issues contain a six-part series on the “Benchwork for the O’Dell County Traction Co.” by Bruce Goehmann. The series offer wonderful ideas and instructions on building an HO scale “freelance” traction layout. Someday, I will design and build an HO scale traction layout. But, it will not be freelance. I will model my layout after the Pacific Electric Railway. I have about twenty (20) Suydam trolleys and interurbans I’ve purchased from eBay in the last 8 months and I will paint and apply them to the layout I i
No excuses–start building it! Start with something tiny–maybe a 2x2 or 2x4 trolley loop, with an edge of the line that goes “off the table” and just start building from there! If your equipment is more interurban in nature, you might have to start out with wider mainline curves, like 8" or 10", and put it on a 2x4 foot hunk of luan plywood.
One big advantage of modeling an interurban like PE is that they ran both passengers (local streetcar and interurban) and freight, and unlike most Midwestern interurbans, rather than being limited to interurban-style freight cars, they interchanged cars with steam railroads. So you can use the same off-the-shelf boxcars, reefers (for all those oranges!), flatcars and gons carried at every hobby shop–you’ll just pull them behind a steeplecab or box motor instead of a diesel (or you can model late-period PE, when they used diesel-electrics equipped with trolley poles to activate signals!) It’s not hard to find PE freight car decal sets, but they interchanged frequently with SP, UP and AT&SF, and Los Angeles’ role as Pacific port meant just about any railroad’s equipment could wind up on PE trackage.
The toughest part will be structures–there are a few commercial kits based on California prototypes, but other than one Suydam cardstock model, nobody makes suitable kits of California bungalows, Spanish Colonial Revival stucco homes or other archetypally Californian architecture. A few can be bashed into something resembling a CA prototype.
I posted some current photos from my layout yesterday (admittedly, all with cheesy cellphone cam) here:
This layout started as a 3x6 foot L-shaped switching layout (about three-quarters of the way down the page, the portion that looks the most “done”) and I have added on 4-6 foot modules over the past few years, currently running two-thirds of the way around a 12x24 foot room for a mainline run of about 48 feet.