Florida Highland Railroad

[wsor4490uk]

Greeting all,
After a year of messing about in the shed its time to settle down and get a crack on with my permanent layout.

After a number of ideas were thrown about last year I have decided to stick with an end to end plan
I have left the windows at the front of the shed clear to make it feel as big as possible.

The layout will be set in central Florida, and will be based on the Pinsly group of Florida railroads but under the name of Florida Highland
The FHRR will use two locomotives to run their trains on the branch.
These will be from me ever growing group of CF7s

   

   


Here is a video of two of them in action.


http://youtu.be/S6b8NnWpFE4

For the track plan I have cherry picked a number of my favourite industries from the Florida Central railroad , these include

1- 84 Lumber (lumber loads in Boxcars, Centre-beam and Bulkhead flats)
2- Cemex Cement Supplies (100 ton 2 bay hoppers and ACF Center flow 2 bay hopper) ex Southdown
3- CMC Recycling (assorted gondolas)
4- Louis Dreyfus Citrus Inc (Trinity 64' Reefers)

Located off the layout
5- Plastic Tubing Industries (assorted tank cars) (Hazmat) Pushed up to gates and then PTI tractor comes and pulls them inside their compound

Track plan
   

84 Lumber and Cement area
   

PTI drop off point and CMC area
   

The finished baseboard can be seen here
http://youtu.be/Aub161AuVd0

Track laying will shortly start

[long island jack]

Nice to see your finally getting a start, on the build.
like the track plan, better with no run round, I take it will be top & tail freights?

Ray

[FCIN]

Very nice Chris! Layout plan sure looks like a lot of locations of some of Pinsly's operations in Florida.

[alcanman]

Great to see you got your US railroad modelling mojo back, Chris!

Your track plan looks great and well thought out , a nice spacious look with plenty of gentle curves. Look forward to following your progress.

Co-incidently, my US modelling mojo seems to have returned. I've also been considering Florida for my next project, with maybe, some FEC power.
It's too cold to venture into the garage at the moment, maybe when the weather turns warmer in the spring I may start building a new layout, We'll see ....

Mal

[Engfanuk]

Very interesting. I am intrigued to see how that track plan looks when track laid. I have 9ft x 9ft and worried my plans looked cramped but yours certainly don't.

If you wouldn't mind I'd love to hear how you see operations working.

All the best,

Steve.

[Canadian Atlantic Railway]

The track plan looks well laid out and you have some interesting motive power to run on it. I'm looking forward to seeing things come together

[shortliner]

-

Co-incidently, my US modelling mojo seems to have returned. I've also been considering Florida for my next project, with maybe, some FEC power.
It's too cold to venture into the garage at the moment, maybe when the weather turns warmer in the spring I may start building a new layout, We'll see ....

Mal

In the same position as you re going out in the garage -and co-incidentally great minds are thinking alike - FEC and I've had an idea based on Jack Hills New Castle Industrial RR track plan- when it warms up a bit I shall see if it works

[wsor4490uk]

Thanks guys
Always a warm welcome here.

Operation ...

I am led to believe that there are a total of ten employees working for Pinsly in Florida, three per railroad and one GM.
So the Florida Highland Railroad will also have just three, an engineer, a conductor and a another (sales???).
What this means for the operation is, I can't have one loco moving at one end of the layout and then another moving at the other end.
The crew are not going to walk far from loco to the next,(not in the Florida heat) so when they need to swap from one loco to the next, they will try and get as close as possible to the other unit.

The idea is to have two types of operation
Firstly, when I feel the need to go and switch a few cars around,

I guess it will go something like this.
The two locos will be tied down on the kickback spur next to the interchange.
I'll pick a couple or three random cars, lets say a couple of cement hopper and a empty gondola, that have been left at the interchange by the CSX local
As this move requires work at CMC Recycling two engines are required

The first move is to couple up the two locos, and then drop one of them off underneath the highway bridge (in the shade)
The trailing loco would then switch the interchange, pulling the empty gondola out first and pushing it to up the other loco.
The two cement hoppers are next to be pulled and are coupled up to the gondola.
We then depart and takes the branch line for CMC Recycling. With the first loco and gondola clear of the junction switch, the train is then split and the remaining loco and cars head towards the Cemex Cement Supplies , where the empty cars are swapped over for loaded ones.
We then make are way back to the junction, swap locos and switch CMC Recycling.
Once completed the train is made up again and we head back to the interchange.
Drop off the cars and tie the locos down

Of course I can substitute these industries for any of the other three.

The second type of operation will be with a full switch list using the SwitchList program for the Mac.
This will be for a full blown operating sessions when a few friends come round and we try and run a full week of train service.

[Mike Kieran]

It sounds great Chris. I can't wait to see more.

[Engfanuk]

Thanks for the ops info. I had one thought on CMC recycling. Are you not limited to maybe three cars in or out on that spur as the lead to it that has the crossing on is the limiting factor? I'm intersted as designing with these things in mind is very new to me so I hope to learn through asking if that's ok?

Steve.

[wsor4490uk]

Steve
Because of the size of the layout the maximum train on the layout will be 4-5 cars so it shouldn't be a problem

[wsor4490uk]

Layout update
Trying out a couple of different industries on the HIP
Gone is the Old Gold and Black Bakery and JWB Scrap yard and they have been replaced with Haston Cement and Coke-Cola bottling plant












Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[long island jack]

you've got to keep JWBs crap

Nice work as usual, but your slowing up in your old age!!!

Ray

[Rscott417]

Heisenberg Chemicals, Breaking Bad fan? I really like the shoving platform, looks horribly perfect. What kind of engine is that?

[wsor4490uk]

I'm enjoying this one Ray. There is no rush
Taking me time getting it right
Spent a full 8 hrs operating on Tuesday and really got back into it
It's took almost a year to get to this stage

JWB s crap has been replaced with the Coke plant and has 4 tank car spots

Rscott417 yes I'm a big fan
The engine is a Kato HIgh Hood GP35


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk