does anyone know of any good HO layout design websites with the old timey deserts of the west in mind? i just saw ‘oh brother, where art thou’ and i was inspired.I would like to base my next layout on that sort of period in the dry flat deserts of america. i dont know a lot about this period or locale, but any prototype road easily available in the shops would be great.
thanks,
sean
I model 1885. The road names I would look at would be Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, ATSF and Union Pacific.
Probably the one with the most equipment in the desert area would be the ATSF. I model the SP and CP.
A good basic book that helped me a lot was the Time Life book from the cowboys series, The Railroaders. You can get it pretty easily on eBay for around $6.
Once you decide on a road name, you can research that particular one. These books tend to be expensive, but just about anything is available through inter-library loan. I get the books and scan the parts that I need. Most of the good reference materials are out of print anyway and most qualify as public domain.
Well…“O Brother Where Art Thou?” actually was set in Mississippi in the 1930’s, not the old west or the 19th century. In the summer it can get hot (“Africa hot” as it was described in another movie) and dry and dusty, but it’s not desert. It’s dry farmland in some areas in the summer, gets more moist as you go south towards the Gulf I believe.
Would be an interesting time/place to model in any case. Elvis was born in Mississippi, guess you could model Tupelo MS and have a young Elvis Presley watching the 'Mystery Train" go by!!
Allen Keller (of Allen Keller videos) models the Memphis TN area c.1950, which includes parts of Arkansas and Mississippi. He produced a video on it, might give you some ideas about the general area.
p.s. “Pappy” O’Daniel was actually governor of Texas, not Mississippi. [C):-)]
Actually that film was based and filmed in Mississppi, but for “western” modeling, or an example of a layout based in the US SE, try to find an out of print book named
“Building an HO model railroad with personality” by John Olsen.
Filming Locations for
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
I think you mean SW not SE?? (Southwest like Texas - New Mexico - Arizona).[:)]
Nothing wrong with modelling Mississippi and the “Deep South” though, you could model the Southern Ry for example, nothing wrong with a green 4-6-2 heading up the “Crescent Limited”. Casey Jones was killed in Mississippi in 1900 running a train for the Illinois Central - a nice early streamlined orange-and-chocolate IC “City of New Orleans” would look great on a layout!! MS had some small railroads that were interesting too.
thanks everyone. i would like to make it a (maybe 6’ by 1’) shelf layout , but were there any suitable switching yards or industries big enough in that period? (I was Inspired by the time of the film, not the actual place) I am also just getting into the hobby of scratchbuilding with styrene, is there any interesting beginners projects from that era i should check out?
once again, my grattitude for your replies.
mines
logging
whiskey
cattle
passenger service
yard
interchange yard
port
grains
fish
just about anything we do today
This is close to what you’re looking for I think: http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/
It’s not so much desert, but it’s old timey and western.
Well US railroad miles-of-trackage peaked around 1920. In the time-setting of the movie (1940) there were many HUGE yards and industries around. (By 1900 the Chicago stockyards covered several miles I believe.) In the South or Southwest, there weren’t so many manufacturing plants etc. there compared to the northeast, but there was plenty of business going on. Agriculture was big in the South, cattle in the Southwest.
Speaking of cattle…remember that refrigeration wasn’t as good as is now. Today, you can slaughter cattle in Texas and ship the frozen sides of beef to Chicago or Kansas City or whereever to be processed into steaks and hamburger and shipped to Maine or Seattle. However, before the 1950’s you had iced reefers which could keep things cold but not keep them frozen. So, cattle were moved alive in stockcars from Texas to packing plants. Once slaughtered and processed, the meat could only be distributed within an area relatively close to the plant. So instead having a few large packing plants, you had more but smaller plants spread out throughout the country.
p.s. If you actually want to model the old west of the 1880’s, and not the time or place of the movie, I believe Carstens recently came out with a book on modelling the old west that would probably be a good place to start. [:D]