Liberty Industrial Spur

[Russ Bellinis]

Justin, you don't need to get rid of the hollow core doors. You could cut them in half lengthwise or cut 12 inches off one side, remove the board on the side you will dispose of, and put it in as a filler on the open side of the cut. You will then have a 12-15 inch hollow core door to build on.

[Mike Kieran]

Justin,
Just for kicks, look up the Meeker Southern. It's a shortline in Puyallup, WA. It has no runaround, uses a caboose to shove to it's main customer Commecemant Bay Corrugated (although I don't think that they serve there anymore). It can easily fit into a northern California theme. The engine has a heckuva paint scheme.

[FCIN]

Justin;

I fully agree with Stein; both of Mike's plans are very good and would provide interesting operation. Since you already have two HCD's butted together, you could stretch the plan out quite a bit if you like or just do the plan on a single door if that's what you really want to do.

I'm with Mike - what sort of metal company? There used to be a facility near me that received box cars of aluminum ingots that they stamped in to something (never did know what), but they didn't ship the finished product out by rail. As I recall they used to get 2 or 3 car loads a week. There was also a metal fabricator here, that would receive steel I and H beams on flat cars, cut and drill them to specs then ship them back out. Neither would provide much car variety, but without knowing what sort of metal company you're talking about, it's hard to look for examples. About the only other thing that immediately comes to mind is a facility that produces aluminum cans, but those are often huge operations. Guess they could receive aluminum ingots inbound and ship out the finished cans.

And.... Mike's mention of the Meeker Southern is a dandy operation too. You can follow the entire line on Google maps/aerial views and the MSN is a nice short line operation. Their locomotive is really nice. You can find plenty of videos on the Net for inspiration too.

Hate to see you changing your mind yet again, but no harm in trying to find what you think will really suit you.

[Justinmiller171]

I fully agree with Stein; both of Mike's plans are very good and would provide interesting operation. Since you already have two HCD's butted together, you could stretch the plan out quite a bit if you like or just do the plan on a single door if that's what you really want to do.

Mikes plans are good, but they aren't what I'm looking for, I want to have at leas 8 feet so I can let the engine run, I also want the spurs to be separated from each other, at most 3 tracks side-by-side.

I'm with Mike - what sort of metal company?

Hmm... I never really thought about which kind, it's just that I have some bulkhead flats and gondolas and I figured a metal company would make a good industry for them, A pipe company would also work.

Hate to see you changing your mind yet again, but no harm in trying to find what you think will really suit you.

Yeah I hate it too, but it will be better in the long run


One plan I really like is Stein's Shamrock Ave. Trackplan:

I really like the variations in the benchwork, that is one of the reasons I want to get rid of the HCD's. And a few modifications could turn it into a nice Southern Pacific layout.

[Mike Kieran]

Justin,
Let me know what size of HCD as well as the brand and type of turnouts & track. I may be able to adapt a design.

[steinjr]

I really like the variations in the benchwork, that is one of the reasons I want to get rid of the HCD's.

There is nothing that prevents you from adding some bump-outs to the side of a rectangular shelf of some kind.

My little living room switching shelf layout started out as two rectangular boxes - each 4 feet long and 10.5" deep.




After a while, I added some bumps to the front of the layout to build industries there:







Smile,
Stein

[shortliner]

Justin, I posted this as a suggestion some while back, and one of our members is building it - If you have 96" simply add 12" to each end, or add 24" including a road crossing at the left, ,with another industry on that side of the crossing - don't have gates, have cross-bucks and use fusees, much more fun! BTW - the Town Sheriff will NOT be happy if you block the road traffic for more than two moves
I can assure you that it will keep you busy for a good while

   

[FCIN]

Justin;

I missed something here. Not sure why you'd want to get rid of the HCD's that you already have in place. I sort of see why you like the idea of having the bench work jut in and out here and there, but since you've already got it place, why tear it all down and then have to build all new bench work? Your 24 in wide HCD's would give you more room for scenery and/or non-rail served industries in some areas, where I'm guessing you want the plan narrower. If you really want to have the bench work narrower here and there, you can cut the HCD's and then fill in the open edges with 3/4 x 3/4 pieces. Still a lot of work when you've already got bench work in place.

You mentioned that you want at least 8 feet. Do you mean you want the layout to be 8 feet long or do you want an 8 foot run before you get to the industrial spurs? Two HCD's butted together are 13ft 4in in length and with the 'L' section you could do a version of Stein's plan (or one of Mike's plans) and include a small yard with the spur branching off it. Of course that would mean getting a couple more turnouts, but it would make it interesting. You could use the other tracks for car storage and a place to line up your cars.

You also mentioned that you want the spurs to be separated from each other. At first I thought you meant that you wanted more distance between the industrial spurs, but when you said "at most three tracks side-by-side" I wasn't sure what you meant. Having three tracks side by side would certainly fit your current bench work and the spurs could be placed several inches away from the switching lead.

Stein's version of Shamrock Ave and both of Mike's plans would make very nice switching layouts - especially since I think you have the room to extend the length of any of those plans - not to mention having the additional bench work where you could stage/store equipment. If worse came to worse, you could always replace the one HCD with a narrower shelf if the 24in width bothers you. Adding a couple more turnouts for the staging area would make any of those plans really great.

Guess I'm just a little confused at this point.

By the way, what did you not like about your previous plan? I thought it was pretty good, even if it was a variation on Jack Hill's track plan - nothing wrong with that. It was quite plausible, representing a piece of an abandoned line that served a large industry and one or two small ones.

[steinjr]

As I read Justin, he seemingly wants to cut down on the area to scenic, since he feels he has bitten off more than he can chew with 2-3 hollow core doors - 30" of depth and 3 x 80" of length in N scale represents a strip of land about 3200 feet long and 400 feet deep.

So he wants to cut down the depth of his layout. At the same time he also still wants a spread out and sparse track plan - longish run, more space between more or less parallel tracks - and preferably no more than a 3 tracks between aisle and backdrop at any point. And he wants more foreground scenery again - in the form of bump-out industries. Which again works out to a track plan which still has a relatively high scenery to track ratio.

One possible way of turning what he already has into a narrower layout with less area to scenic would be to cut down on the depth. In principle, all that takes is an electric jigsaw (or a hand saw and patience), some clamps and a some straight pieces of wood to use as cutting guides. Easy enough to make the front angular instead of straight (for some variety), inserting pieces of wood between the door skins for stability, and then fastening a Masonite strip over the front for looks.

Of course - he might have to take up and move some track before cutting. Might be smart to take up some track so he can take out the doors one at a time and cut em somewhere else, too.

Grin,
Stein

[Justinmiller171]

As I read Justin, he seemingly wants to cut down on the area to scenic, since he feels he has bitten off more than he can chew with 2-3 hollow core doors - 30" of depth and 3 x 80" of length in N scale represents a strip of land about 3200 feet long and 400 feet deep.

So he wants to cut down the depth of his layout. At the same time he also still wants a spread out and sparse track plan - longish run, more space between more or less parallel tracks - and preferably no more than a 3 tracks between aisle and backdrop at any point. And he wants more foreground scenery again - in the form of bump-out industries. Which again works out to a track plan which still has a relatively high scenery to track ratio.

That's exactly what I meant Stein,

Building new benchwork would be no trouble at all, I would simply need to cut it out and put it on top of the existing supports.

As always, I appreciate the help

[Tyson Rayles]

O.K., I'll bite. What's a HCD? I think 80" is closer to 1040 feet in N scale but it's early yet and I'm not fully awake.

[steinjr]

O.K., I'll bite. What's a HCD? I think 80" is closer to 1040 feet in N scale but it's early yet and I'm not fully awake.

HCD is Hollow core door - 80" long.
Unless I misremember, he has three hollow core doors - total length 3 x 80" = 240". Times 160 = 38 400". 38400 inches / 12 inches to the foot = 3200 feet.
Which makes one HCD in N scale about 1066 feet long in 1:1 scale.

Smile,
Stein

[paulus_jas]

why are we talking about N-scale?
I probably missed something. In his last givings and druthers Justin is still talking HO.
Paul

[steinjr]

why are we talking about N-scale?
I probably missed something. In his last givings and druthers Justin is still talking HO.

I missed that. Maybe Justin at some stage was talking about doing N scale, or maybe I am just getting old :-)

To convert from N to H0, just divide everything by 1.8 (160/87.1).

Three hollow core doors represents a strip of landscape about 220 feet x 1330 feet in H0 scale.

Smile,
Stein

[Justinmiller171]

So I have been reading back through some of my previous layout threads, and I saw some great posts by Stein and Bil that I can only now understand, there was one post by Bil that really stood out, he wrote about how he found a theme and stuck with it, I realised that this has been my problem all along, I understand that I will most likely never find the perfect theme, but I can't even narrow it down to a few themes.

How can I narrow down my list of possible themes?