Prototype Layout Modelling

[shark_jj]

I have been faithfully trying to model the area between Works Tower and MO Tower in the Altoona area and have discovered a few things.  I am also editor of the newsletter of the Canadian Association of Railway Modellers.  I thought I would share my Editorial Column from this issue and hear your thoughts on the subject.

PROTOTYPE LAYOUT MODELLING

As you know if you have been reading this column for a while, I am building an N Scale layout based on the Pennsylvania Railroad and in particular the area between Works Tower in Altoona and MO Tower in Cresson.  In designing the layout I followed the prototype trackplan quite faithfully and where I had to diverge from the prototype I accomplished this by not modeling that portion of the line.  This was necessary due to the limitation of space that a model railroad entails. 

Operations in the month or so leading up to the Convention and then when my layout was open during the Convention underscored a couple of things for me.  One, the four mainline tracks don’t flow smoothly.  At varying times you are required to cross over through switches and in an open house environment you cannot utilize all of the tracks as a result of this. 

I began to look at this in the context of the trackplan and why the Pennsy would have set it up this way.  Altoona had 9 separate freight yards and was a Division Point at which most trains stopped and either changed power or definitely crews.  This meant there was little requirement for the mainline to run directly through.  The interlocking at Alto for example was set up to funnel traffic into the yards, not to facilitate mainline running.  Since I am modeling none of these yards, Alto on my model railroad is meant to facilitate the mainline.  The end result is that I have modeled an interlocking which was designed for one purpose and I am using it for another. 

This lead me to re-examine my approach and to ask the question, “What makes Alto, Alto?”  The answers are, 1:  The tower, it is a distinctive structure and know to every Pennsy modeller, 2: The 17th Street Bridge which is immediately adjacent to the tower, and 3:  The surrounding structures including Wolf Furniture and the Pennsy Shop buildings.  The one answer that didn’t surface was the track configuration. 

The second issue which has arisen has to do with switching opportunities.  I knew when I committed to this particular stretch of trackage that there was literally no switching opportunities.  This stretch was mainline, pure and simple.  It was designed to get trains over the Alleghenies and to facilitate the movement of helpers.  I committed myself to a purely mainline operation.  This is no longer satisfactory.

All of this musing has led me to re-examine my approach to my railroad.  I still wish to model the area between Works and MO, however, I want it to run smoothly as a model railroad and I wish to add switching opportunities.  Switching areas that are off the modeled area of the layout will be moved onto the modeled area, even though that puts them slightly in the wrong place.  I will be sticking faithfully to the right industries and will be modeling the structures as they existed. 

I looked back over numerous layouts in the Press and on the Web and found that individuals who modelled  large Class 1 railroads tended to ProtoLance, that is they used specific areas or structures to give the impression of the prototype without adhering to the prototype faithfully.  There are some exceptions, but by and large this is the case.  Those who adhered exactly to a prototype tended to be modelling smaller roads or branchlines. 

I have begun the redesign of several areas.  I have come to the realization that I am not building a museum, but rather a working model railroad which has to be fun to operate both for myself and the group who model with me. 

I have chosen to share this self examination process because for the last decade or so their has been a push in the model railroad Press led by Model Railroader to model the prototype more exactly and faithfully and in truth I got caught up in it.  I have come to the conclusion that model railroads are driven by totally different factors from the real railroads.  Prototype Railroads are driven by economics, operational efficiencies, safety, and numerous other factors.  As model railroaders we are only driven by the desire to enjoy our hobby as a leisure activity.  Part of that enjoyment is building layouts which operate well and where problems are minimized and where those things which drew us to railroading and a particular prototype or area are showcased. 

My railroad will be more prototypical than most, it will be fun to operate.  When you look at a scene you will know exactly what it represents.  I will still do the research necessary to make each scene as prototypical as possible including the track configuration, but all of that will be balanced against “Does this make my model railroad run better?”  Where there is conflict, the model railroad will win out

[wm3798]

Brilliantly put, JJ.  I'm in the process of helping a guy in Arkansas design his layout around MoPac in Little Rock, and we're having the same discussion.
The object of the game should be getting your layout to be the right "flavor".  Recognizable places, equipment and consists often contribute to this much more significantly than track plan.

My own layout is a good example of reaching some of those compromises.

Lee

[shark_jj]

Thanks Lee, it unfortunately has taken me some time to conclude what others including yourself reached more quickly.

[John]

I looked back over numerous layouts in the Press and on the Web and found that individuals who modelled  large Class 1 railroads tended to ProtoLance, that is they used specific areas or structures to give the impression of the prototype without adhering to the prototype faithfully.  There are some exceptions, but by and large this is the case.  Those who adhered exactly to a prototype tended to be modelling smaller roads or branchlines.

I accepted this as my fate a long time ago, and while I try to give my layout a B&O/CSX flavor on the lower deck mainline, I also have a WM inspired upper level that tries to capture that flavor. In my world, the WM inspired lines are still active with CSX power. While I marvel at your Horseshoe Curve scene, and I believe you capture it very believably, it lends itself to helper ops and roundy roundy (most layouts are roundy roundy) .. For me, to model the Metropolitan or Capitol, or even the B&O East and West ends would basically be much of the same .. so I have chosen to put industries, including a steel mill complex in various areas of the basement where I have real estate. Proto typical locations not .. but I am trying to capture the flavor .. that means as close to scale track as I can get, representative (and accurate) rolling stock, representative industries, and most important of all, staging - for those ops sessions I will eventually get to, so that the trains can "go away" and not reappear after going around a loop of track. It also means that there will be more scenery than track.

[MichaelT]

Brilliantly put, JJ.  I'm in the process of helping a guy in Arkansas design his layout around MoPac in Little Rock, and we're having the same discussion.
The object of the game should be getting your layout to be the right "flavor".  Recognizable places, equipment and consists often contribute to this much more significantly than track plan.
My own layout is a good example of reaching some of those compromises.
Lee

Good afternoon,

I am "a guy in Arkansas" that Lee is talking about in the prior post!!

My experience with model railroads is short, I've only been in the hobby for about six years, so I'm having to try and learn on the fly so to speak. I started in large scale modeling, and have a layout in my front yard, and I'm working on a layout in my back yard, but they are very free lanced, whimsical garden railroads.

I don't have space to run large scale inside, and after dabbling in HO for a thought, I went back to N scale as my scale of choice indoors. I have a layout space in a spare room that is 11ft x 12ft roughly, and I have installed plywood boxed benchwork with 1-1/2" of foam base on it. The benchwork is about 48" from the floor level, comfortable enough to work with and reach across. It's an around the walls setup with a peninsula in the center giving me some added layout space.

Now, railroad choice. Why Missouri Pacific? Not an overly popular railroad, but it ran here in Arkansas; practically WAS Arkansas Railroading for a number of years. I can remember as a kid watching Jenks Blue engines pulling trains through my hometown, so it has an appeal to me that it was local for me. The Jenks shops and yard in NLR were/are HUGE...and Union Station was a very nice structure. My "era" roughly I think will be in the late 60's to mid 70's, so passenger service would be already retired...but I will hold the "modelers license" to run an excursion train whenever I get the notion to...so typically I'll want to run a freight operations with the Mopac Railroad. From the Little Rock area, the Mopac ran Northwest to the Oklahoma border, northeast into Missouri, east to Tennessee, southeast to Mississippi and Louisiana, and Southwest into Texas........SO MANY CHOICES!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With that said, Arkansas doesn't really have that "ONE SPOT" that is famous, like the afore mentioned Alto Tower or the 17th Street bridge...so there isn't a "famous" landmark that I can start from. If I were to consider modeling the Jenks yard, I'm afraid I'd have to open my other two spare rooms, the dining room, living room and probably 1/2 the carport....the yard is HUGE...did I mention that before?

One thing that was nice about Little Rock, at one time there were three railroads operating here, Mopac, the Rock Island, and Cotton Belt all ran in and around Little Rock some...so there would/could be some interchange traffic if I want.

I guess my question, and Lee has offered some grand advice, so I thought I'd see what some of you other folks could add or offer. I'm guessing that with a continuous loop, I'm going to have right at 90ft of run...so within that 90 ft, just how much "stuff" can one include to where it doesn't look too compressed, too crowded...

Michael (The guy in Arkansas)
 

[shark_jj]

Michael, my suggestion would be to sit down with a piece of paper.  Create two columns.  In the first column list those things that you want to model and that you are prepared to build and maintain.  In the second column list those industries or landscape features that are unique to the area you are modelling.  In the latter column you may not have a Horseshoe Curve but you will have items such as grasslands, or hills.  Rural countryside or cities.  Lots of bridges, or no bridges but lots of grade crossings.  In other words it will start to focus your attention on the image you want to create.  A nice N Scale scene can be made in a 3 to 4 foot space.  Think of how many of those you have and what you want to assign to each.  2 or 3 might be required for example to have a medium sized yard.  One would be required to have a nice river crossing.  This will help you imagine what can be included.  Bottom line here is when you have those lists weaned down, they should represent what you want to do and what will make building this layout fun for you. 

[Matthew Roberts]

Brilliantly put, JJ.  I'm in the process of helping a guy in Arkansas design his layout around MoPac in Little Rock, and we're having the same discussion.
The object of the game should be getting your layout to be the right "flavor".  Recognizable places, equipment and consists often contribute to this much more significantly than track plan.
My own layout is a good example of reaching some of those compromises.
Lee

Good afternoon,

I am "a guy in Arkansas" that Lee is talking about in the prior post!!

My experience with model railroads is short, I've only been in the hobby for about six years, so I'm having to try and learn on the fly so to speak. I started in large scale modeling, and have a layout in my front yard, and I'm working on a layout in my back yard, but they are very free lanced, whimsical garden railroads.

I don't have space to run large scale inside, and after dabbling in HO for a thought, I went back to N scale as my scale of choice indoors. I have a layout space in a spare room that is 11ft x 12ft roughly, and I have installed plywood boxed benchwork with 1-1/2" of foam base on it. The benchwork is about 48" from the floor level, comfortable enough to work with and reach across. It's an around the walls setup with a peninsula in the center giving me some added layout space.

Now, railroad choice. Why Missouri Pacific? Not an overly popular railroad, but it ran here in Arkansas; practically WAS Arkansas Railroading for a number of years. I can remember as a kid watching Jenks Blue engines pulling trains through my hometown, so it has an appeal to me that it was local for me. The Jenks shops and yard in NLR were/are HUGE...and Union Station was a very nice structure. My "era" roughly I think will be in the late 60's to mid 70's, so passenger service would be already retired...but I will hold the "modelers license" to run an excursion train whenever I get the notion to...so typically I'll want to run a freight operations with the Mopac Railroad. From the Little Rock area, the Mopac ran Northwest to the Oklahoma border, northeast into Missouri, east to Tennessee, southeast to Mississippi and Louisiana, and Southwest into Texas........SO MANY CHOICES!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With that said, Arkansas doesn't really have that "ONE SPOT" that is famous, like the afore mentioned Alto Tower or the 17th Street bridge...so there isn't a "famous" landmark that I can start from. If I were to consider modeling the Jenks yard, I'm afraid I'd have to open my other two spare rooms, the dining room, living room and probably 1/2 the carport....the yard is HUGE...did I mention that before?

One thing that was nice about Little Rock, at one time there were three railroads operating here, Mopac, the Rock Island, and Cotton Belt all ran in and around Little Rock some...so there would/could be some interchange traffic if I want.

I guess my question, and Lee has offered some grand advice, so I thought I'd see what some of you other folks could add or offer. I'm guessing that with a continuous loop, I'm going to have right at 90ft of run...so within that 90 ft, just how much "stuff" can one include to where it doesn't look too compressed, too crowded...

Michael (The guy in Arkansas)
 

Hey Micheal! I took am a Mopac fan! Heck, the city I'm from, Austin, even has a Mopac Blvd! They built it, for a couple miles, on either side of the railroad tracks!

As to famous AK spots, the only thing I could think of would be either Jenks Yard and the Little Rock Union Station, or the area around Ft. Smith.

I had started on modeling the MoP in 1950 in Austin, but it was an almost exact proto-plan, and got slightly boring, an difficult, as there was a lot of street trackage in downtown Austin up to the 1980s.

So I went the other way, towards really protolancing, coming up with my own, Mopac flavored Texas-Denver railroad that competes a lot with the GC&SF and the FW&DC.

[wm3798]

Hey Michael!  Your ears must have been buzzing.  Welcome to the fold.

You're in the midst of some pretty heavy hitters at the Railwire, and you'll find we tend to look at the philosophy of model railroading here as much as at the nuts and bolts.  (We have plenty of nuts here, too... )

Anyway, this should be a very good discussion to advance your project.  Take a look also at the recent threads on scenery (in the N scale forum).  There's some really good ideas there.

Lee

[MichaelT]

Hey Lee! Well I'd heard so much about The Railwire, and I'd snooped a bit before, but figured if some of these guys are 1/2 as good as the credit you give them, I wanted to learn from some of the better modelers around!!

I have printed all the posts so far, going to take them home and type up what sounds like a good idea (which is all of them), and see what questions I can wring out of them for further discussion.

Interesting thought of how watching something on TV can make its' way to a model railroad?? The Mrs. and I were watching a show called "How it's made" on the science channel; they were showing how aluminum is made...it's made from alumina, which is made from bauxite. Well, as it happens, Arkansas for many years had a huge bauxite mining operation, even derived the town name of Bauxite; and Alcoa, the aluminum company had/has a big operation in Southern Arkansas: that was the idea behind the branchline I was showing you last week.

Bauxite mining = Alumina = Engcot = Aluminum products which are then shipped to all types of customers. There was even a "Bauxite and Northern Railroad" that handled a majority of the mining business and connected to the Mopac lines in two places I think.

Anyway, I digress. Thank you gents for input, and I look forward to gleaning more from you in the near future.

and btw....can someone tell me how I might be able to pull a Mopac avatar on here to use?

Michael

[wm3798]

Cut and paste this into your avatar place...
http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/missouri-pacific-lines-6.JPG

Don't say I never did anything nice for you!

Lee

[ryourstone]

This is the same line of thinking that has me shifting focus on my next CNJ layout away from the mainline and to the Newark branch. Supporting a 4 track main with enough staging, rolling stock and interlockings is a big undertaking. I'm still including a short section of the main at Elizabethport with just enough staging to keep getting across the diamonds to the south station platform interesting, and allow me to model the big-name passenger trains.

[MichaelT]

Cut and paste this into your avatar place...
http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/missouri-pacific-lines-6.JPG
Don't say I never did anything nice for you!
Lee

I don't have a place for a personal avatar....post # thing maybe??

[MichaelT]

Cut and paste this into your avatar place...
http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/missouri-pacific-lines-6.JPG
Don't say I never did anything nice for you!
Lee

I don't have a place for a personal avatar....post # thing maybe??

Ok, whomever did that for me....THANK YOU!!!!!

[asciibaron]

i have been pouring over track charts for my prototype of choice, the PRR's Panhandle in eastern Ohio in 1967.  i see why the railroad has the interlockers there, and why there is a 3rd track for westbounds only.  wanting to model the main line aspects of this line, i didn't want to leave out switching for a local and a mine run (from staging returning to staging).

i think i can get what i want in my space, but it's a matter of looking at the prototype and deciding what needs to be there.  when i look at a specific interlocking tower, i first see the tower, then the signals, then the tracks.  granted, my locales are mostly crossovers and a few diamonds, nothing as complex as Alto.  not even Mingo Jct was that difficult and can be modeled easily and used in a prototypical manner.

it's all about choices and what having a prototypical layout is about.

-Steve