Full Version: What Era, Railroads, & Locomotives are you set on?
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Do you have a time frame where you're set, time of year?

Are Steam, Diesel, Electric or all/some of both?

What are your railroads and what's the rolling stock consist of for deliveries/industries?

Is it Freelance or Compressed Prototype or even exact scale replica?


I am currently running a modern setting, with Conrail as my main railroad, with traffic from BNSF and CSX, and PBNE as a shortline. Since Conrail isn't what it use to be I still make that it is in my setting but limited to their complete engine roster. I was thinking on adding my own railroad as well but still trying to figure out the name for it. The rolling stock consist of local deliveries (Coal, Steel) to anything passing by like autoracks, manifests.

The setting and locations are not configured yet since I don't have a huge space for a layout but it will probably be spring/summer, with a very loosely based Lehigh Valley area. The industries will be based off some of the actual ones around me but to my building specs, there will be:

Steel Mini Mill (metal transportation)
Coal Fired Power Plant (coal)
Coal Loading Facility (small coal tower)

Industrial Park with Plastics Plant, Wood Storage (like 84 Lumber) and some others not determind yet like metal fab shops, production/manufacturing. The most real estate will be the Mini Mill, so far it has grown the 5 feet long and will probably grow another 3 feet when I'm done. There will be a medium sized yard (Conrail), smaller yard (PBNE), and one for Intermodal traffic. Of course all plans are subject to change or modification Goldth



So what are your plans or completed plans for your Railroad/Layout/Engine/Stock?
My layout is to be set in the early 1940s. It won't be any later than 1943, but no earlier thatn 1939. It is also set when summer time is just coming to a close, but only a few trees will have actually changed more towards the fall colors.

The roster consists of, primarily, steam. 2-6-0s dominate, with the most mundane chore, yard switching, having been taken over by a small diesel-mechanical patterned after the EBT's M-4.

Railroads involved are mine, the Apple Peak RR & Coal Co., which is also a freelanced RR, and the Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain, which interchanges traffic with the Apple Peak.

Rolling stock is primarily hoppers. Hoppers, hoppers, and still more hoppers. But that can only be expected from a line that gets most of its traffic from coal mines. A couple of boxcars are also on the line, as there are a pair of very small industries that get switched. The boxcars will get interchanged from the H&BTM when they are needed. Curiously, there is also a tank car on the line. The tank car stays parked in the yard, but contains oil to spray inside of the hoppers to keep the coal from freezing in transit.
I think my era and locale came about mostly due to space limitations. I got involved in HOn3 due to lack of space for a large® layout, and I liked scratchbuilding and kitbashing too much and N-scale seems a bit small for that task. Modeling Colorado narrow gauge seems cliche, but I soon discovered plenty of narrow gauge lines in southern Arizona. Those narrow gauge routes were all gone by 1930. Given that criteria, my selection was relatively easy. I would model a narrow gauge mining shortline sometime prior to 1930.

I am attempting to re-create the Morenci Southern Railroad, but chose to "freelance" rather than try to strictly adhere to my prototype. I felt that the information and photos of that line are too scarce to do a faithful reproduction, so I chose to "invent" my own railroad incorporating elements from several different narrow gauge industrial lines. I do like diesels and other eras, and if money wasn't an issue I would consider making a transition era N scale layout that can be put into a closet for storage.
Do you have a time frame where you're set, time of year?
Present Day

Are Steam, Diesel, Electric or all/some of both?
Steam, some diesel, don't know if there will be electric......yet.

What are your railroads and what's the rolling stock consist of for deliveries/industries?
HO scale:
Sag Harbor Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. 3' and standard gauge, and the shipyard is the "parent company" of the following:
Sagaponack Montauk & Cindys Harbor...Standard gauge.
Shinnecock Hills Lumber company...Standard gauge.
Wiscasset, Bucksport, and Schoodic Point...30" gauge.
rolling stock
any and all...including 3' gauge container cars capable of handling 20' containers.
Is it Freelance or Compressed Prototype or even exact scale replica?
Freelance
the "centerpiece" is the Cindys Harbor Seaport and Marine Museum, on the lower Kennequogue River, "somewhere in the Northeast". Interestingly, the shipyard itself has had one drydock modeled in N scale.
tomustang Wrote:So what are your plans or completed plans for your Railroad/Layout/Engine/Stock?

They're complicated, but slowly taking shape in the planning stage, and even slower in the real world...! I won't have a layout per se, but a series of modules that can be used at the club (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotrak.ca">http://www.hotrak.ca</a><!-- m -->) or home.

Quote:Do you have a time frame where you're set, time of year?

1930's - Southern and eastern Ontario. I like fall, so I may do most or all the scenery with that scheme. I really like Paul Dolkos' "Modelling the November Scene" work.

Quote:Are Steam, Diesel, Electric or all/some of both?

Steam mostly - although early diesels (both experimental and production) will make an appearance. I also have a Mack Railbus and a couple of doodlebugs that will figure in passenger ops.

Quote:What are your railroads and what's the rolling stock consist of for deliveries/industries?

Mainly Canadian National Railways and it's components. I include my fictional Ottawa, Algonquin & Georgian Bay in the CNR family so that there will have to be less custom lettering work. Wink

Industries will currently be centred around one fictional town - Marlpost, Ontario. I plan a fuel, ice and coal dealer, stock yard, passenger station, milk stop, and grain elevator as the main industries. There will be a team track to handle whatever else I want to run, such as gondolas full of sugar beets (a once common Ontario fall activity).

Other ideas include a canoe factory, cold storage, ice shipper, and another town more closely modelled on real-world Brighton Ontario.

EDIT - forget the rolling stock question! 35

Rolling stock will be typical of the 1930s and will not always be tied to industries on the layout. 36' and 40' boxcars will rule, and then there will be small quantities of 8000 gal tankers, ice reefers, 42' and smaller flats, 40' gons (no big "mill gons"), heavyweight passenger equipment, and an assortment of MOW.

Quote:Is it Freelance or Compressed Prototype or even exact scale replica?

Yes. Big Grin For the most part, I will freelance this. However, one protoypical scene I do intend to do is the Highland Inn in Algonquin Park.

More on the Ottawa, Algonquin & Georgian Bay here: <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2053">viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2053</a><!-- l -->

Andrew
As many of you know, I model British trains on my 00 (a British scale similar to HO) layout.

My layout is basically depicts a station (Wellow Station, near Bath, Somerset) on the famous Somerset & Dorset Line in the late-50s or early-60s. However, I also will occasionally run the layout in a 1920s/’30s mode and I also have enough stock to run trains that would have run in the north of Britain (LMS & LNER) in the 1930s ... Also, occasionally, I run my 1950s Canadian HO trains.

In any case, the layout is firmly rooted in the steam-era from the 1920s to the 1960s (steam ran until 1968 in Britain).

I’ve also read at least two magazine articles recently where the person who designed these layouts purposely made them so that they could run a variety of trains from different eras and different regions. I think this is a great idea and allows you to have a lot more fun and variety! It can get boring to be stuck in one region/era.

Rob
I actually model different railroads and eras depending on where I'm operating. My home layout will be a switching layout based on the Los Angeles Junction or LAJ. I'll be modeling fairly modern on that layout, but cut off date will be @ 2005. I will be running one Cf-7. I think the LAJ was through running the Cf7's and used the LNG units borrowed from the parent company BNSF from the mid 1990's on, but they had the CF7's for back up until just recently when they decided to get rid of them. My railroad will be protolanced (is that a word). I'm going to try to do it after the prototype, but it may get some free lancing of industries.

It will be in a 7' x 9' "L" with the "C" yard starting in the corner and continuing on the 7 foot section. I'll have the Great Western Malting Company on the end of the 7' section. Another reason for a 2005 cut off, the GWM was closed and torn down sometime in the last few years and the silos replaced by a tilt up warehouse.

On the 9' leg I'm going to model a part of District Blvd in Vernon. On District in a space of something like 1/4 to 1/2 mile, 5 LAJ spurs cross the street from a yard behind the industries on one side of the street to industries on the other side of the street. I'll just have two parallel tracks behind the buildings on one side with enough cross overs to allow me to beak up a train into cuts and shove cars into all of those industries on the opposite side of District Blvd.

I also belong to a modular club. Their I model the Santa Fe in the mid 1950's I also want to build a module set of the South West Portland Cement plant in Victorville as it existed in the mid 1950's. and of the quarry located 13 miles or so from the plant. The quarry will be modeled off layout and the run from the quarry to the plant will be compressed considerably to fit on 2- 6 foot modules. I may add a third 6 foot module to allow a longer quarry run.

I hope to join the La Mesa Model Railroad Club at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum to run late 1940's-mid 1950's trains on their Tehachapi layout in the future, but finding time to do that is probably a year or two off into the future.
The official description is "British railways, 1829-1959". Someone looking at it might narrow it down to 1923-1948 with a lot of slippage.
Most of the locos are steam but I would get electric if they were available.
Part of the concept is that instead of Nationalization, 3 of the big 4 merged to fight off the Great Western. The Perth and Exeter Covers a large swath of Britain. But sometime it's a little railway with ambition. Other times it runs across southern Ontario. Goldth Misngth
The only industry on the line is the GERN plant. We do run an intense passenger service.
What trains, what era, what season???

If it runs on rails 2 or 3, wood , coal, oil burners, deisel or electric, from then to now(then being when? yes) Icon_lol

As far as railroads anything that went into the CSX family lines, also like NS, N&W, CONRAIL, PRR, PENN CENTRAL Icon_lol
>>Do you have a time frame where you're set, time of year?

I've moved the railroad back to about 1970.

>>Are Steam, Diesel, Electric or all/some of both?

Mostly diesel with one steamer.

>>What are your railroads and what's the rolling stock consist of for deliveries/industries?

Ex-NYC, PC and ECI (my road)
I service a grain elevator, fuel depot, plastics factory, run through and limited passenger service.

>>Is it Freelance or Compressed Prototype or even exact scale replica?

Freelanced.
I have a switching layout set in Detroit in the 60's / early 70's, a fall setting (my fave time of the year). Some of it prototypical, but it is mostly a freelance layout in a prototypical setting. It is a bridge route with connections to GTW, DT&I, the H&S, and maybe another railroad, but I am not set on that yet. My layout is currently 30"x14' with a 25' extension along another wall (this part is still in planning stages). There are quite a few industries that may not be prototypical for the time period, but it is what I want. This is what I have planned so far: auto plant, chem plant, fuel distributor, scrap yard or two, team tracks, newspaper plant (Detroit Free Press), bottling plant, Stroh's Brewery (I know they did not have rail service), slaughter house/meat packing, coal yard, warehouses and other industries found in Detroit. I have a list of rail served industries in Detroit and what they received to aid in choosing industry and names to keep a "Detroit flavor." I prefer to use diesel switchers as the main motive power, but I get to use road power from the interchanged railroads (a little added bonus!). As far as rolling stock goes, I can run pretty much anything since it is a bridge route. I even figured out how to get a passenger run from the GTW to run across the layout using trackage rights!

Chuck
My layout is set during the late 60's early 70's. I hadn't really thought about time of year but since all the trees are green and I have a scene with kids fishing off a pier...it must be summer! Big Grin My motive power, like the Penn Central's is a varied mix of diesels although I tend to favor EMD F units and Geeps. There is heavy industry on the layout including a steel mill and a large cement plant. I based the layout very loosely on Penn Centrals River division that ran on the west side of the Hudson River. Just for fun I created the freelanced Kings Port & Western railroad to interchange with the PC at Kings Port which is vaguely reminiscent of Kingston, NY which has a yard and was the junction point for branches. The KP&W runs mixed freights but also brings in coal trains.
Do you have a time frame where you're set, time of year?

I do have a very specific time frame … on the Lehigh Susquehanna & Western, every day is a fine, sunny day in September, 1935. Some “slippage” is permitted on an “as required/individually reviewed basis,” with permitted exceptions no more than one or three years “in the future” and then only if the permitted exception somehow just “looks right.”

Why 1935? Simple! Because it's September (my birthday month,) and a pair of absolutely stunningly gorgeous Masterpiece Automotive Replicas "1936 Chrysler Airflow Imperial Eight" models were purchased to look beautiful sitting under the lights of the illuminated showroom floor of the Weissport, Penna. Chrysler Dealer! It’s the beginning of a New 1936 Model Year, with all the excitement of interested citizens gathered to look through the large showroom windows. With that scene only a matter of inches from the viewer, it would be difficult to convince that viewer that they were observing some more recent year.

Because September is the beginning of Fall and the “Change of Seasons” is beginning to get underway in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, the majority of foliage will still be green with a few pockets of yellows, oranges and reds scattered about at the highest elevations, just enough color to reinforce the notion of early Fall.

Are Steam, Diesel, Electric or all/some of both?

All LS&W Motive Power is of the Wooten-fire-boxed Camelback variety, almost all being Reading Company prototypes. The motive power roster currently includes …

Ex-RDG A5a four-coupled switchers (2)
Ex-RDG B8a six-coupled switchers (2)
Ex-RDG D8sd 4-4-0 Atlantic (1) [new acquisition]
Ex-RDG I-5c 2-8-0 Consolidations (3)
Unidentified Prototype 2-8-0 Consolidation (1) [new acquisition]
Ex-RDG I-8 2-8-0 Consolidations (2)
Ex-RDG L7sb 4-6-0 Ten-Wheelers (2)
Ex-RDG P5a 4-4-2 Americans (2)

Additional Motive Power …

An NYO&W Class U 2-6-0 Mogul and a Pennsy E6 4-4-2 Atlantic, each wearing their own herald and doing their best to reinforce “beyond-the-basement” interchange traffic “on stage.” A ‘47-‘53 vintage brass-and-zamac-casting-hybrid Mantua Reading Company G1sa 4-6-2 Pacific sporting the classic Reading gold pinstriped cab and tender will bring the passengers and the mail up from the Allentown-Bethlehem area, along with a Reading I-10sa 2-8-0 Consolidation hauling Reading interchange freight into the yard at Weissport, further reinforcing interchange with the world "beyond the basement.” The newest acquisition, a Reading Company Class D8sd American will haul the mixed-Daily.

There are also a pair of ex-B&O 0-4-0T “Docksiders,” owned by GERN (which will probably soon hit the auction block as GERN has ordered one of these new box-cab oil-electrics being offered by the trio of ALCO/I-R/GE for their “on property” switching.) An older brass Akane C&O USRA “H” Class 2-6-6-2 had been purchased back in the seventies when I had a basement in which to build a layout. It was to be “pusher power” until I could find one of those rare Erie L1 0-8-8-0 Camelbacks replace it (I missed the opportunity to purchase one when they were offered as I was in the middle of a cross-continent move.) … I never found an L1, and since I no longer have a basement, the big articulated locomotive will be joining the "Docksiders" on the auction block at some point in the near future.

What are your railroads and what's the rolling stock consist of for deliveries/industries?

The LS&W is a “Freelanced Prototype,” inspired by the development of other such railroads by the likes of Allen McClelland and Tony Koester and the other “Lichen Belt” guys in the mid-seventies. In an effort to envision a name that would sound so realistic that no one would question it, and some might even say they had heard of it (as has happened a couple of times, accompanied by my suppressed smile,) I chose two rivers in eastern Pennsylvania, then looked to the west, and 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.

Making periodic "guest appearances" on LS&W trackage will be Reading Company, Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York, Ontario and Western.

Being an anthracite coal hauler in the ‘30’s, the most common piece of rolling stock is the USRA twin hopper, with the addition of an abundant amount of the ever-present box car red box car, a smattering of cement-stained grey covered hoppers, some tank cars and gondolas, a handful of reefers and a few lonely flat cars. (If I neglected to mention anyone, I apologize.)

Is it Freelance or Compressed Prototype or even exact scale replica?

Having done a major “down-sizing” from an “in-the-early-construction-stages” 20’ x 35’ basement layout to one potentially measuring 12’ x 16” in one half of a Great Room with a 13’x 2 ½’ extension along one wall of the other half of the Great Room, I would say that we are dealing with some serious compression … the compression of an already-rather-compressed, freelanced “compressed impression” of the upstate coal regions of Pennsylvania. But a railroad will be beginning to take shape in my house after the completion of the "Challenge," and I’ll be having a good time … and I am looking forward to sharing the experience with my new-found friends on “Big Blue at The-Gauge.” Big Grin

EDIT: Reworded a few sentences to better convey the description of the Lehigh Susquehanna & Western.
EDIT: Update: Listed Motive Power and added railroads with visual interchange, edited the “additional motive power” section.
One of the bizarre things I've noticed about myself -- since I have 3-4 regions or time periods that I can run on my layout -- is that I can have trouble deciding which region/era to run! Sometimes I'll be in a quandary for some time, trying to decide. I'll occasionally set the layout up for one era/region only to change my mind after 20 minutes or so to another region/era!

I guess I need to have a larger fiddle yard and/or be more decisive!

Rob
Southern Ontario circa 1900.

4-4-0, 2-6-0, 4-6-0 and 2-8-0 steam.
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