A Small Town That Could Be Anywhere

[sailormatlac]

Mike's Port Able project gave me the boost needed to revive my resolution to build a small switching layout at home. Wall shelves proved to take to much place in my cramped room (ah! those old sloped roof).

The plan came together easily. Building arrangement too. I guess ideas from my first days doing modelrailroading just resurfaced.

I returned to an island layout 4' x 5'. At this point, it will probably stay in the basement for a while.



It depicts the most generic rural town you can think of. The locale is set in Quebec City south shore Bellechasse county where most of my real life clients are located. There's no specfic prototype but it is a melting pot of several small community that had classic grain elevator, small manufacturing plants and typical David Ouellet's flamboyant churches.

The elevator will be modelled according to St. Vallier Station from which I found nice pictures. The village setting similar to La Durantaye and the industrial district inspired by St. Damien.



There's no specific era, but I intend to operate somewhere between 1960 and 1990, when those rural elevator became obsolete.

The operation concept is that a train leaves a string of cars (about 6) in the station siding. Then a local switcher sort out this small train around the town.

The industries are an oil dealer, a plastic factory (loosely based on real life IPL and IEL from this county), the grain elevator and it's cooperative store.

Most building on the pictures are stand on. The goal is to operate and scenic the track. Structures will be upgraded, bashed and replaced according to my needs.

Minimum radius is 18". I only intend to run 4-axle diesels and small steamers I have on hands. Preferably Geep, RS-3, SW9 and S-2, CPR and CNR.

Relief is done with a rasp. I always found that too many layout overlook the importance of modelling ditches around the trackage. A small detail that makes the difference.

Track is PECO, turnouts Setrack from my long gone Harlem Station project. I've ordered a few stretch of PECO 83 for the mainline and PECO 75 for the sidings to test them before using them on the club layout in the future.

Credit for the track plan goes to Mike, not me!

















Don't expect too much update, this is a project just for fun...

I'm actually in the process of turning the Walthers elevator into something less generic.

IPL/IEL plastic factory is a combination of DPM's Cutter factory and Cabs garage. I reworked the window details to make them similar.



Matt