08-15-2017, 02:47 AM
I thought I'd take a moment to explain the general idea of the theme of the layout(s).
The St. Charles layout is based - as previously mentioned - on the Southern Railway branch from the small yard at Appalachia to the mines surrounding the town of St. Charles, Virginia. There were over half a dozen coal mines served by the branch, the largest ones being at Pocket, Benoit, Mayflower, and St. Charles itself.
At St. Charles, there is a wye for turning locomotives, where the line splits into two more branches serving the various mine runs. It is still in use today by the Norfolk Southern Corp, though coal isn't as booming as it used to be. Just "south" of Pocket the line splits at what was known on the Southern as "L&N Junction", where the Louisville and Nashville branch into the area joined the Southern - the L&N having trackage rights to serve the mines in the area as well. This was - until recently at least - still in practice, but by L&N successor CSXT. With CSX's downturn in coal traffic, I've no idea if they still actually serve St. Charles.
The layout I have built is based on the Model Railroader project layout - the Virginian - with a few tweaks. Where the MRR plan had a spur coming off the layout leading to removable staging, I've got an additional short board with the St. Charles triangle and depot spanning both it and the corner of the main layout. The leg of the triangle that heads "off layout" will lead into staging, however I need to get that part of the layout built to fit it's new home, and get a DCC auto-reverser to wire into the triangle to avoid shorting out the layout. As such, the triangle itself isn't wired currently.
The yard on the layout represents the sidings at St. Charles, with the branch that runs up and over the main tracks on the plan representing the Mayflower branch - the mines of Dominion and Mayflower will eventually be represented on the layout. Dominion by the Walthers Diamond Coal Company kit, and Mayflower by - I hope - an N Scale Architect Lackawanna Mining Co kit (if I win the ebay bid I've got going!)
The only structure on the layout that's accurate to the prototype is the depot at St. Charles, which I kitbashed from a Blair Line Gerald Depot kit, using reference photographs of the actual depot I found online. The depot itself burned down in the early 1970's and was replaced by a smaller brick structure, but that's just boring compared to the old Southern wooden structure, in my opinion.
Operations will be represented with a little modellers licence involved. Real ops on the line were performed by the road power - St. Charles didn't have any dedicated switch engines. I'll be doing things a little differently.
The plan is to have road power from both the Southern and the Louisville and Nashville bring in empty hoppers and take away loaded ones, with a small switch engine - likely an MP15DC or a GE 44T - doing the actual mine runs and switching the yard. There will also be a local manifest freight which will come and go to make things interesting, serving the various company towns, team tracks, and a couple of freelanced industries added for interest - moving coal hoppers to and from staging will get boring real fast!
I'll add the plans/ideas for the harbour layout in a separate post. For now, here's a couple of video logs I added to YouTube last night:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://youtu.be/Mw6e9QYsW90">https://youtu.be/Mw6e9QYsW90</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://youtu.be/RK_akxZbT6M">https://youtu.be/RK_akxZbT6M</a><!-- m -->
The St. Charles layout is based - as previously mentioned - on the Southern Railway branch from the small yard at Appalachia to the mines surrounding the town of St. Charles, Virginia. There were over half a dozen coal mines served by the branch, the largest ones being at Pocket, Benoit, Mayflower, and St. Charles itself.
At St. Charles, there is a wye for turning locomotives, where the line splits into two more branches serving the various mine runs. It is still in use today by the Norfolk Southern Corp, though coal isn't as booming as it used to be. Just "south" of Pocket the line splits at what was known on the Southern as "L&N Junction", where the Louisville and Nashville branch into the area joined the Southern - the L&N having trackage rights to serve the mines in the area as well. This was - until recently at least - still in practice, but by L&N successor CSXT. With CSX's downturn in coal traffic, I've no idea if they still actually serve St. Charles.
The layout I have built is based on the Model Railroader project layout - the Virginian - with a few tweaks. Where the MRR plan had a spur coming off the layout leading to removable staging, I've got an additional short board with the St. Charles triangle and depot spanning both it and the corner of the main layout. The leg of the triangle that heads "off layout" will lead into staging, however I need to get that part of the layout built to fit it's new home, and get a DCC auto-reverser to wire into the triangle to avoid shorting out the layout. As such, the triangle itself isn't wired currently.
The yard on the layout represents the sidings at St. Charles, with the branch that runs up and over the main tracks on the plan representing the Mayflower branch - the mines of Dominion and Mayflower will eventually be represented on the layout. Dominion by the Walthers Diamond Coal Company kit, and Mayflower by - I hope - an N Scale Architect Lackawanna Mining Co kit (if I win the ebay bid I've got going!)
The only structure on the layout that's accurate to the prototype is the depot at St. Charles, which I kitbashed from a Blair Line Gerald Depot kit, using reference photographs of the actual depot I found online. The depot itself burned down in the early 1970's and was replaced by a smaller brick structure, but that's just boring compared to the old Southern wooden structure, in my opinion.
Operations will be represented with a little modellers licence involved. Real ops on the line were performed by the road power - St. Charles didn't have any dedicated switch engines. I'll be doing things a little differently.
The plan is to have road power from both the Southern and the Louisville and Nashville bring in empty hoppers and take away loaded ones, with a small switch engine - likely an MP15DC or a GE 44T - doing the actual mine runs and switching the yard. There will also be a local manifest freight which will come and go to make things interesting, serving the various company towns, team tracks, and a couple of freelanced industries added for interest - moving coal hoppers to and from staging will get boring real fast!
I'll add the plans/ideas for the harbour layout in a separate post. For now, here's a couple of video logs I added to YouTube last night:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://youtu.be/Mw6e9QYsW90">https://youtu.be/Mw6e9QYsW90</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://youtu.be/RK_akxZbT6M">https://youtu.be/RK_akxZbT6M</a><!-- m -->