Help needed on new office layout

[wsor4490uk]

Hi all
I need some help with a new layout in my office
I have a space of 10 feet by 15 inches and is viewable from front and right hand side

It needs to be US in the mid 90's onwards.F

I've made several attempts including the APU spur (Alaska) and BNSF switching layout and a layout yard. I've even tried an O gauge inglenook but still not found anything I'm happy withH.

I've waited 35 years for a permanent layout space and have now gone completely blank.

Any help would greatfully received

Thanks
ChrisI

[steinjr]

What do you want from a layout, apart from the wanting modern American locomotives and cars in H0 scale ?

Urban, rural, lots of locos, sparse, something else ?

Smile,
Stein

[wsor4490uk]

Stein
It needs to be industrial switching of some type with different types of cars.
Something like alcanman CSX Palmetto Spur but different ......


Mid life crisis time....

[faraway]

Stein
It needs to be industrial switching of some type with different types of cars.
Something like alcanman CSX Palmetto Spur but different ......


Mid life crisis time....

I have got two question:
1. With buildings from the 80' and 90' (shoe boxes) or an older area but still surviving with run down brick etc.?
2. Do you want to follow modern track layout for modern industrial areas with all turnouts facing one direction or some more old grown with possibly a run around?

[Russ Bellinis]

Do you have a favorite railroad, or preferred typed of freight cars? Do you want to model prototype, freelance, or proto-freelance? The more information you post about "givens & druthers" the easier it is to help you come up with something you'll like. Minimal information leaves us "shooting in the dark."

[jwb]

It seems to me that there are some very successful shelf-type layouts here. Among the factors that contribute to their success are the ability to reconfigure quickly -- guys seem to be able to replace structures, change era, change region, or whatever, pretty easily. It also seems to me that the potential track arrangements for a layout 10 feet by 15 inches are pretty straightforward. My sense would be either to build the shelf and lay track on a temporary-pilot basis to see what works for you, or to draw a plan at maybe 1 inch to 1 foot and cut out pieces of paper that correspond in size to freight cars and locos, shuffle them around, and see what works best.

Industry types and regions can be changed pretty easily -- as I'm sure you've found yourself, what with how you've redone Haston!

My inclination, based on the experience I've had working West Egg as a small layout connected to a large one, is to take the space you have and make it "bipolar" -- for instance, two Inglenooks connected as mirror images, connected at their single track ends. Rather than have one side scenically "dead" as staging, I would make it a scenically and operationally active terminal, feeding another scenically and operationally active terminal at the other end. If you decide to have a runaround, which is actually a good idea, maybe it could be shared between the two ends.

The advantage would be to give each end a different scenic treatment, maybe a different prototype railroad as well. A possibility would be to say that one end is a piece of NS/CSX/BNSF/UP, the other end a shortline or regional.

[Green_Elite_Cab]

I can think of several ideal short lines.

Ones that immeadiately come to mind are the Raritan Central Railway, and the Rahway Valley Railroad.

Both are shortlines in New Jersey and that connected with Conrail (or Conrail Shared Assets Operations these days). The Rahway Valley Railroad was finally abandoned in the early part of the 1990s, but was easily modelable, and used a pair of 70 ton switchers (offered by Bachmann Spectrum) and some New YorK, Susquehanna & Western switchers before abandonment.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.trainsarefun.com/rvrr/rvrr.htm">http://www.trainsarefun.com/rvrr/rvrr.htm</a><!-- m -->


The Raritan Central Railway is still in service, and acts as a terminal railroad serving a large industrial park. Pieces of this would also be pretty easy to model.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoList.aspx?id=RCRY">http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoList.aspx?id=RCRY</a><!-- m -->

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.raritancentralrr.com/Raritan_brochure.pdf">http://www.raritancentralrr.com/Raritan_brochure.pdf</a><!-- m -->

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.raritancentralrr.com/index.html">http://www.raritancentralrr.com/index.html</a><!-- m -->

If you REALLY want a good idea, go to multimodalways.org and search around. Conrail produces ZTS charts, which map out in extreme detail (right down to the spotting locations of cars) the tracks in its system. You could pick any single industrial track of the MILLIONs, and find something interesting to model.

Railroad documents in general-

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/rrs/rrs.html">http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/rrs/rrs.html</a><!-- m -->

Conrail ZTS charts

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/rrs/CR/CR%20ZTS/CR%20ZTS.html">http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/ ... 20ZTS.html</a><!-- m -->

[wsor4490uk]

Hi Reinhard


1. With buildings from the 80' and 90' (shoe boxes) or an older area but still surviving with run down brick etc.?
2. Do you want to follow modern track layout for modern industrial areas with all turnouts facing one direction or some more old grown with possibly a run around?

older 60's or 70's re-down with run around would be good.

Russ
that's the problem to many railroads too many ideas


(The "Givens and Druthurs")

- Size? (known: 10' x 1' 3", does this include "offscene staging"?)
staging will have to be on the layout

- Preferred number of operators?
one possibly two (Engineer and Conductor)

- Preferred "Job" you'd like to perform on the railroad?
(Railfan? Engineer? Brakeman/Conductor? CTC/Tower op? Other?)
Switch crew I guess

- Preferred Scale/gauge?
(assume nothing, existing equipment "in hand" may be holding you back, think "blue sky theory")
N gauge stock to hand
8 BN era locos 100 plus assorted freight cars including hoppers boxcars tanks etc.
HO
too many to list but roads include
UP BNSF ATSF BN ARR CSX FEC TRI-RAIL IHB
plus locos used on Haston.
300 plus assorted freight cars including hoppers boxcars tanks etc

Currently building up stock for my CTU Alaska layout, which will be extended by 4 feet before I take in to the NEC this November.
plus I also just picked up 12 refers somer super liners and tri-rail coaches

I also have 12 O gauge freight cars 1980's onward

- Any preferred prototype "theme" or "inspiration"?
(doesn't need to be slavishly proto, taking "base inspiration" from a prototype, and interpreting into a proto-lance/freelance context, is a very valid way forward...)

that's the real problem... too many.

Green_Elite_Cab
thats an interesting railroad

Thanks

[steinjr]

still not found anything I'm happy with

What was wrong with the layouts you have built so far? Was there actually anything wrong with the layouts, or is it just that you enjoy building layouts more than e.g. switching cars?

that's the real problem... too many.

Why is that a problem? Is this going to be the last layout you will build in your life? What prevents you from listing say 20 potential candidates, write the ideas down on pieces of paper, and then pulling a random piece of paper out of a hat to decide what to build next? When done with that, takes some pictures, run a few trains, and then take it apart and build something else.

Or do something similar to Reinhard (faraway) - keep the track plan mostly unchanged, and change the whole look and feel of the layout by replacing buildings, cars, locomotives, cars etc at fairly frequent intervals?

Smile,
Stein

[faraway]

Stein's last idea sounds great to me (of course ).
I had a look at your Alaska layout and got immediately a vision how to remodel it.
Move it to the east coast into an old run down brick industry area 1980. You will replace all your buildings with fancy brick buildings build 1930 and older. The old buildings will have low cost extension made of corrugated steal, concrete etc. Windows are closed, modern loading docks have been added into old walls. A world of patches. The front of the layout becomes the edge of quay wall and you are in the harbor business. Most of the tracks will become street/quay running in a fancy mix of old cobble stone and patches of asphalt. Just a possible vision looking at Alaska.

[paulus_jas]

hi Reinhard and Stein,
i know an Alaska plan by Ulrich quite well, could you or Stein show the Alaska plan you are talking about?

Smile
Paul

[faraway]

hi Reinhard and Stein,
i know an Alaska plan by Ulrich quite well, could you or Stein show the Alaska plan you are talking about?

Smile
Paul

I am talking about Chris's "CTU spur Alaska". This is the link into the thread:
http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic...ska#p96912

[jwb]

Naturally, many of us are familiar with Chris's work -- he's an accomplished and very creative modeler, and I'm a little puzzled that HE's asking US for advice!!! To some extent, I can't disagree with the folks who'd just say to take the Alaska layout or Haston, place on shelf brackets, turn on power, and voila! On the other hand, the impression I have is that UK style exhibition layouts actually aren't meant to be permanent. As Chris implies here, even Alaska or Haston just sits in storage and only runs when it goes to a gym or armory for an exhibition -- and then, as Chris has said on the Alaska thread here (I think), there are so many distractions with the attendees/punters and old friends and acquaintances stopping by or asking questions that all he really gets around to with those layouts is moving equipment more or less at random. That's fine for what those layouts are meant to do, but I think there's a strong implication that even the most successful exhibition layout for a particular UK function may not be as satisfying in a permanent home environment -- or at least that's the (potentially mistaken) impression I have.

I got to thinking about the suggestion I made of two Inglenooks in a bipolar configuration, and I remembered a shelf layout I started when I was in graduate school in the 1970s. This was long before Carl Arendt showed up, but I think it was based mainly on Chuck Yungkurth's Gum Stump & Snowshoe, with some refinements from a track plan in MR by a guy named (I think) E.S.Seeley. His idea was that a layout like this would be sort of a mini-DM&IR, hauling ore from the pits to a port. In any case, it has the advantage of having an operating plan:    
This is a schematic, and you can reposition tracks, add a spur here or there or whatever, but I think it could be done in 10 feet by 15 inches.