Your Layout

[RobertInOntario]

My layout is based on Wellow Station in Wellow, Somerset, England ca. 1955-1965. I'm trying to model the Somerset and Dorset Line which ran from Bath to Bournemouth in southwest England. This line is legendary in the UK and ideal for the modeler because a wide variety of locos and rolling stock from different regions ran on this line. It's also a very picturesque, rural part of England.

This time period saw a large variety of steam locos and a nice mixture of older and newer ones. Sadly, the line closed in 1966, IIRC. Diesel power was almost unheard of on this line !

I chose Wellow because it seemed fairly manageable to model its station and area in British 00 scale (similar to our HO) on a small layout. This layout is only around 5.5x3.5' so the main part focuses on the station and surrounding area. The rest of the layout is fictional, trying to reflect a Somerset and Dorset atmosphere.

Rob

[MountainMan]

What brought about the time, location and names for your layout?

My layout is C&O because most of my family were employed by the C&O / Chessie. I was Born in W.V. so I model that area. The J&M Short line RR is Jon & Michael my 2 sons. EGP Fuel is from my first grandson Ethan Gregory Perry. J & E sawmill is second grandson Jon Ellis. Jones transfer is my wife's maternal grandparents. The town's are real towns from my memory. I had plans for another town when I enlarged my layout building, but it looks like that won't happen now.

Since mine is being designed as a fantasy layout, I would have to blame my wife for giving me the idea!

[ngauger]

[Brakie]

My Columbus & Hocking Valley is something I wanted to do for years but,never got around to it till around 2003.

Why C&HV?

My Great Grandfather was a engineer on the C&HV and when I was a kid my dad had a O Scale (2 rail) HV 4-6-0 and I got hook on the HV.In 2003 I laid plans for a modern short line and decided on C&HV..

In retrospect..I do regret two things.. First those "Red Bird" Geeps-what was I thinking? and second the C&HV turned out to be bigger then I planed and now its time to downsize the C&HV back to my original plan of 2-3 Geeps with Railbox,Rail Gon and other lease cars for "home" cars..Maybe a new paint scheme?

[Puddlejumper]

My first love was the Santa Fe, I think because of that beautiful warbonnet paint scheme. That was 25 or so years ago. I gradually shifted to Conrail because it was what I saw every day, all formerly PRR territory. I was eventually able to get a job on the railroad in CR territory but for the new owner, CSXT. I started as a trainman, and later an engineer, though that career would be short. I operated in urban territory from south Jersey to Richmond and Cumberland., including the North East Corridor (Amtrak) from Phily to Washington, D.C. I'm sure this is what started my infatuation with urban railroading, street running, elevated city right of ways, etc. In 2004 I left CSXT to become a firefighter in Washington, D.C. which led to me falling in love even more with the urban environment. I was able to add to my knowledge of former PRR and B&O territories that I had become familiar with by researching abandoned ROWs in Georgetown, D.C. and Rossilyn, Va.

My free-lance railroad, the Baltimore and Potomac, is an independent road that interchanges with PRR, RF&P, and B&O and takes some influence from the PRR and B&O.

[P5se Camelback]

My layout, the Lehigh Susquehanna & Western is a “Freelanced Prototype,” and was inspired by the example set by the railroads of Allen McClelland and Tony Koester and the other model railroaders who made up the “Lichen Belt” in the mid-seventies. I chose a name that sounded so realistic that no one has ever questioned it, and some people have even said they know of it. I chose two "major" rivers in eastern Pennsylvania and looking west, named it the Lehigh Susquehanna & Western. I developed a Company Herald using a typeface and a graphic style/convention reminiscent of the turn of the last century. I use the Herald as my Avatar here.

I have started construction on the layout at least five times, possibly six. In each case, before I got very far I had to move for a new job and the lumber went to the curb. The last start, however, was when the most was accomplished, including hand-laid track and turn outs. So, two of those 2'-6" x 6'-0" sections were wrapped in bubble wrap and went into the moving van ... four more times.

I am now in a nice, smallish rental house. I live by myself (no wife to tell me to do anything other than work on my model railroad.) I have now gathered a couple sheets of half-inch ply and some dimensional lumber and have it "acclimating" inside the house to reduce the potential for dimensional change after things have been measured, cut and screwed together. I have identified a potential source for Homosote (and have the Regional Homosote Sales Rep's phone number in case I need some leverage to get the local supplier to get some for me.

I have a track plan in final formulation (it'll be totally final when I squeeze the trigger on the saw.) I'm so looking forward to getting it going!

The geography and the towns are real upstate Pennsylvania towns in more or less the correct order, east to west for the small section of the branch of the LS&W that I will be modeling (it's been down-sized several times over the years from a basement-filling Division to a partial-living room-sized section of a branch.)

All of the businesses and industries on the layout are immortalizing family and friends, and some, but not all, include puns. My brother-in-law’s last name is “Schoch” and so there is a regional electrical parts distributer called “Schoch Electrical Supply.” The sign board in front of the typical little upstate Pennsylvania white clapboard Methodist Church has my father’s name as the pastor. The Chrysler dealer, with two shiny new Chrysler Airflows on the floor, marking the time as September, 1935, is named for a fellow Industrial Designer who worked for Chrysler in their West Coast Styling Studio. The hosiery mill is “R. Nold Mills,” named for my grandfather, Arnold Marsland, a hosiery mill machinist/mechanic.

Being an Anthracite hauler, motive power is all Wooten fireboxed Camelbacks, and there a lot of them!

As benchwork is erected and progress is beginning to be made, I will begin to document the construction of my (greatly reduced in size) “dream” layout … well, maybe not my dream layout, but my final layout, and one I will enjoy building.

[FCIN]

Every layout I've ever planned or built, up to now, has been based on a prototype or piece of one. When I was kid with the good old Lionel stuff and lived in Danville, KY, it was Southern Railway. When we moved to Frankfort, KY and I discovered the F&C Railroad (which I'd later work for), the Lionel stuff was used to try and model that short line.

After a three year hitch in the Army, I got involved in N scale and was again going to try to model the F&C, although there was no appropriate motive power available in N scale in 1969, so instead I built an N scale layout based on the L&N when I went to work for them after about 9 months on the F&C. That was the only layout were I ever got to the point of installing scenery and darn it, we had to move and that was the end of that. Once we finally had our own home (the first of several over the years), I sold off the N scale stuff and got in to HO.

In our first home and I was in the process of building an HO layout based on the L&N branch line that ran to the Old Crow and Old Taylor distilleries, when the April 3, 1974 tornado ended that project.

Another move or two came after that and now I was strictly interested in short line railroads, so every time I started a layout, it was based on a short line that I had visited and researched. First was the Louisville New Albany & Corydon. Then after another move and not having any room for anything but a 16foot narrow shelf along one wall in the garage, I modeled the Indian Creek Railroad, an agricultural railroad operation in Indiana, using an ALCo RS-11. Not much operation, but kept me busy for a while.

Another move to the house we're living in now (and staying!!!) and I've gone several different routes with a layout. First I modeled the Delta Valley Southern - in its entirety no less! But then I got interested in Kentucky logging railroads and 1:20.3 scale and down came the HO and up went the large scale logging railroad. After a couple of years of that and coming to the realization that there is no operation to speak of on a logging railroad, not to mention I had no idea how I was going to model Eastern Kentucky scenery in that scale; I switched to 1:29th scale and tried going that route for a while. An article in MR got me going in that direction. Still have some of that up modeling a small switching operation, but seldom fool with it and now I'm back in to HO scale.

My HO scale layout plans have included modeling any of several short lines that interest me, including the Kendallville Terminal Railway (actually built a reasonable representation of that on a narrow shelf) - then I wanted to model the Warrenton Railroad, then I wanted to model the Lapeer Industrial Railroad - but finally have settled on a free-lance industrial spur!

That's where I am at this stage in my life. No more dreams of large layouts filling the entire basement that I could never complete, just something small that I can get to a completed look in a short time and that has lots of prototype operation and enough scratch building and so forth to keep me occupied in my final years.

[Green_Elite_Cab]

My Westport Temrinal RR is a freelanced private roadname layout. It started as modular layout but is now a permanent layout with some segments I can remove. One part of the layout is still a FREMO module, my Third Street Industrial District. I've built this following an article by Bill Baumann in Model Railroader Nov. 85.



Some time ago I was in a car interchange group and I participated in car exchange as well.
I operate the layout with car cards & waybills, most time by myself. But sometimes there's an op session with up to 8 friends.

Wolfgang

HOLY MACKEREL!

I recognized that layout from a drawing in the book "48 top-notch track plans"!, BN diesels and an SW and everything, thats awesome!

[MasonJar]

What brought about the time, location and names for your layout?

The main town on my layout is called Marlpost, after the name of the house owned by my grandfather and where my father grew up. Unfortunately, it is now the site of a small subdivision

The industries names were/will be chosen from family history, as well as modeller friends.

The time is based on two things - 1) I wanted exclusively steam power on the layout (although this rigis view has been tempered somewhat to include first gen diesels from the 1930s and gas/oil-electrics for passenger service); and 2) Andy Sperandeo's quote that "Mine is the truest form of nostalgia, the fond memory of something never experienced".

I am too young by at least a generation to remember the 1930s, but I do like the design styles that arose (Art Deco, Craftsman and Machine Age). In fact, it is this last one that seals the deal for me. The 30s were the height (or very nearly) of true machines i.e. "all-mechanical" devices. There is something about not having a computer in every last thing that really appeals...


Andrew

[MountainMan]

What brought it about?

A deep love for turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th) Rocky Mountain Railroading.

[e-paw]

Nice thread, it very interesting reading about everyone's layouts, so now it's my turn.
My Layout could be best described as a freelanced 1940's anthracite hauler. I tried to draw ideas from the prototype railroads of that era, but focus on the CNJ as my main influence. I came up with a plausible track plan using real towns and cities in geographical order that cover an aria from the Delaware river west to the Susquehanna river in north east PA. My dad "Toptrain" was the originator of the railroads name The "ANNA", when he had an abundance of NYS&W decals and needed to call his freelanced line something. So I'm the second generation modeler of this freelanced road.