Milwaukee Road - Portage to LaCrosse - early 1950's - N Scale

[altohorn25]

I ran the second session today by myself and found only 2 cars that ended up where they weren't supposed to be; I'll consider that a victory.

I also completed drawing out the track diagrams for each town that will be mounted on the fascia so that operators know where cars are supposed to go.

Just simple line drawings in Windows Paint, but it does the job.  I'll print these on photo paper and then laminate them before mounting them on the side of the layout.

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[altohorn25]

I decided to see if I had enough room to put the early 50's Ringling show on the layout.

I mocked up paper templates of the 4 main tents (5 pole big top, menagerie, side show, and marquee). They look pretty good in the area just to the south Wisconsin Dells.

Turns out I know a nice couple who manufacture model circus tents (my parents have been manufacturing model circus tents from G to N scale for about 50 years).

While I won't run the train on the layout during an ops session, I have plenty of trucks and wagons to populate the scene.

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[altohorn25]

I stopped at my parents' house on Sunday morning and picked up the circus tents (RBBB show in the early 50's) they made for my home layout.  They are blue to match the prototypes (Ringling used a dark blue tent during this time so that the spotlights and other lighting was more effective; darker tent equals no light bleed from the sun........but I bet it sure was hot in there).  They tried "air conditioning" for a while; running huge ducts into the tent from air conditioning wagons parked next to the sidewalls.......it didn't work.

Here's the initial lot layout.  The paper under each tent was just a rough template when I was figuring out how they would fit; the templates will be removed when I install the tents.  Ground cover will be applied as well before the tents are installed.

The largest tent is the big top where the main performances where held.  At this time, RBBB was using a 5 center pole big top.  The length is approximately correct, but the width has been compressed slightly.

Between the big top and the entrance marquee is the animal menagerie.  Patrons would present their tickets for the main show at the entrance marquee and then proceed through the menagerie tent before taking their seats in the big top.

The smallest of the main tents is the side show.  This will have a banner line out front when completed showing the acts that would be presented inside.  This show was an additional cost outside the cost of the main show ticket.

Tent poles will be cut next and inserted into the underside of each tent.  I finished up the poles for the big top last night.

I will most likely have to mount these on a thin piece of wood since the tent stakes will not hold in the pink foam that is the scenery base of the layout.

The white tents give you an idea of what the new ones will look like once they are up in the air (these are about 25 years old and mounted on an N-Trak module).  The white big top is a bit smaller than the new blue one.

Last photo is the prototype.

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[altohorn25]

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