South Bergen Industrial Switching Layout

[Brian M]

I've recently gotten this little switching layout far enough along to start playing around with the intended purpose...switching cars and letting me run a mini-ops session for 30 or so minutes.  Which is sometimes all one needs at the end of the day to relax after working and wrangling an almost-5 year old daughter.  This layout is also going to serve as more of a fictional, "nostalgia" machine for me, compared to my Hudson Valley Lines layout, which I'm striving to keep fairly prototypical.  So the industries on this layout have more to do with the various businesses that I think of when I think about "my" corner of Bergen County.

Here's where the layout currently stands.  In the upper corner is what I'm calling Butterflake Bakery, which is actually a small bakery in Teaneck.  But in my world, they've grown beyond the capacity of the original store, and now have a large bakery building dedicated to turning out cookies and other treats.  Next track down is the mainline, then a small yard.  Then there's a team track and a spur dedicated to The Record, which is a newspaper company based in Hackensack.  They used to actually have rail service, so it is the one industry on here that isn't too far from reality.  Finally, to the lower left is what will be a Hess gasoline distribution plant, drawing on my memory of seeing the Hess trucks and tanks in Bogota, right on the Hackensack River.



I also grabbed a short "bridge" section from my main layout that I wasn't using anymore and turned it into a cassette track (where the train is sitting in this picture).  Since I'd like to also be able to take things outdoors for photography, I've decided to scenic the cassette.  My goal is to give it a Meadowlands feel, although minus the trash and hidden bodies, however that could make for an interesting scene...



Following some well documented examples on the MRH forum on setting up JMRI Operations, I've now got the ability to generate switch lists.  I've used both car cards/waybills and switch lists on layouts I operate on regularly, and I prefer switch lists.  So I envision that I'll want switch lists for my bigger layout when I get to that point.  Thus, having this small switching layout is helping me learn JMRI Operations without feeling too overwhelmed.

Here's the "train" manifest for loading cars from off-layout onto the cassette (same cars as in the picture above, sitting on the cassette).  I've called storage JC (for Jersey City) to make it more obvious where the cars are coming and going.


And then here's the switch list that moves the cars from the cassette to the yard in Hackensack, and picks up the cars currently in the yard to return them to the cassette and eventually off-layout into storage:


The next step in the cycle would of course to be to generate the switch list for the local switcher to move cars between the yard and the industries.  So this full cycle now lets me have cars show up from some other part of the country (represented by Jersey City), and make their way into Hackensack, get switched to an industry, and eventually make their way back out.  I've only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible to do in Operations, so this is still rather basic, but I was excited to get to even this point and have it generally behaving the way I'd like.  Next would be to add specific spots at the industries so that only cars of a certain type get delivered to those specific spots, and also adding in a schedule for some of the industries to determine how often they get switched.

-Brian.

[Brian M]

Resurrecting a build thread from the dead....

The main reason I have always built sectional layouts is that I can move the sections, which has happened plenty of times.  The latest move was last summer when we moved to New York (Hudson Valley) from Colorado.  My larger New York Central Hudson Division layout came with us, along with this smaller switching layout that I had worked on primarily during Covid.  Our (new to us) house is about 120 years old, and while dry, the basement is currently in no condition to have the layout set up, and the time/cost of finishing the basement falls way below all of the other house projects.  Luckily, we have a spare room on the second floor that I have been able to use for a train layout.  It's only 10' by 11', so I knew I wouldn't be able to set up any of the NYC Hudson Division layout sections in it.  But I still had the switching layout module, so I figured I could put it to use and come up with a layout that would make good use of the space.

So here's what I'm calling the South Bergen Industrial, version 2.0.

First, the room had to get repainted.  It's a pass through room to another room in the back of the house that I use as my office.  Which is a bonus, as I get to walk by the trains many times during the day.





I made use of a few of the wooden shelves that I had built to support the Hudson Division layout, and starting with a space for my hobby desk and the existing switching module, I proceeded to build around 3 of the walls of the room.  Along the 4th side of the layout, I built a free-standing, double-sided section with a staging and classification yard on one side.  There's a duck under to get into the center.

[Brian M]

The nice thing about building a small layout is of course that progress comes much quicker.  I started to set this layout up in November of 2025 and had a test train running by February.  Granted, most of the track I had just plopped in place and didn't fully wire nor glue it down, but it was good enough to let me start running trains for the fun of it.



Fast forward a few months, and now the staging/classification yard has the backdrop in place:


I've since painted a coat of primer on the backdrop in preparation for painting the sky color.

[Brian M]

I've also decided to start a Facebook page for it so I can share my progress with other model railroad friends that (gasp!) aren't on Railwire.

https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1CFNncXxqU/

-Brian.

[Brian M]

On the loop back section that connects one end of the staging yard to the other side of the layout, I'm planning to include two short spurs, one for a freight house and the other for some kind of lumber/coal yard.  The track geometry dictates a long sweeping curve, so custom building the two turnouts for these spurs is the best use of space.  Years ago I saw a post on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum where a guy used pencil rubbing of flex track to come up with the template for building a custom turnout.  I always liked that idea, so decided to give it a try.

So far, so good, but also, this is the easy part:

[ATSF_Ron]

Great progress!  I really like what you're doing here.

[N Scale Train Boy]

Nice work Brian! I'll have to come up to see it one of these weekends before I fully move down to Connecticut!!

[Brian M]

Thanks, Dennis.  Yes, you're welcome to come by and check it out.  Oh, also, how are my NYS&W RDC decals coming along?   

-Brian.

[N Scale Train Boy]

Shoot! Completely forgot about those - I'll have to get to work on that! I'll add it to my list, thanks for the reminder!!