Model Forum / General / Railroads / April 2009

Some general thoughts I can offer!!

Basic needs (in order of importance).
Siding, so that 'passenger operations' do not stop all other operation.
Baggage spur.
Team Track, for non-'spur available' incoming freight.
Spur tracks to local industries.

It makes a big difference what space is available, and whether it is an
'End of Line' or Through location.

General recommendation: Lin Wescott's "Track Planning for Realistic
Operation"

HTH

Chuck D.

Basically you've got one train crew for the railroad.  From there, all you
will find you need are tracks to hold things, get from one place to the
other and then turn things around.  Anything more is a lot of expense for
the railroad.
Most of the railroads had interconnections to larger railroads so that is
where you can do all of the big complex stuff that you just feel you have to
have - it belongs to the big main track road and you will also need power
for that road floating around.
Small railroads are more of an exercise in scenery and buildings so have fun
with them!

--
Bob May

rmay at nethere.com
http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay
http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net

I suggest that you contact your local historical society and find out
who the experts on the local short lines are. Don't worry. There will
be plenty of documentation about on virtually any railroad. Acquire
all you can and read about your subject until you're sick of it. Make
an imaginary track plan of the real thing and block diagram each
functional area. After that, scale it down to fit your actual area.

It sounds complicated but it's easier than trying to do it in reverse.
A model railway almost never has that real feel unless it comes from
real life even in small ways. When you go through the steps of
modeling a real railroad in miniature, you will have something of
endless fascination. Make sure you leave some unused space on the
layout where you can add features that the prototype would have had if
they had the ability to build it in miniature like you do.

Go here:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&kn=short+line+ra
ilroad&sortby=2&sts=t&x=0&y=0
Or:
http://tinyurl.com/dlfdmh
for a listing of over 1000 books on short line railroads available
worldwide. If you can't find one there that suits your interest, go
back to watching The Bill. Just kidding. I love The Bill.

Above all, have fun.
--
Ray

The complexity of the depot would totally depend on the
amount of people or freight moved by the railroad, and
it's location. A very simple rural depot would simply
be a passing siding along a station.  You can add a
stub end spur to either end of the passing siding for
a place to drop freight cars (team track or freight house).
That is about as simple as it needs to be.  Anything else,
and you are adding complexity.

You can find track plans on-line by Googling "track plans"
or "layout plans"

At the risk of apearing to spam the group.  I maintain a
list of links on our club site.  Go to www.PDXareaNtrak.org
and click on Other Places.  Scroll down that page to Other
Modeler's Sites.  There are several links in there to pages
of track plans.

On Apr 13, 3:46 am, "David Pennington" <da...@sbxmodelshop.co.uk>
wrote:

Do you get "Narrow gauge and Short Line Gazette" in Great Britain?

It's an entire magazine dedicated to exactly those subjects, and has
featured dozens of prototype *and* model track-plans over the years.

I live in a small town that once featured both Santa Fe and Southern
Pacific branch lines, and both station's track layouts were quite
similar. The "main lines" passed in front of the station and there
were also a couple of spurs -at least one with a with loading dock-
that abutted the passenger plarform at one end. These spurs were
dedicated to LCL and express use.

As built, there were runaround tracks in front of both stations, but
later on these were removed simply because there was never more than
one train on the line at a time, so a train pausing at the station
couldn't "block the line" for anyone else.

There were of course various other sidings in town that serviced a
number of businesses -around 28 as late as the 1950s- but the station
layouts thermselves were almost starkly simple.

Another entertaining example of short-line/branch-line operation was
that neither railroad bothered to invest in either a turntable or a
turning "Y" at the end of the branch, so the locos always came into
town facing forwards and then reversed all the way back to their
points of origin; about ten miles west.

Both S.P. and S.F. kept functional run around tracks in service right
up until they ceased operation, so the locos always headed their
trains rather than pushing them all the way home, but the sight of an
old steam engine carefully backing out of town with both the engineer
and fireman leaning 'way out to see around the tender added flavor to
steam operations right up until the diesels took over. (Whereupon both
railroads took to dispatching two units hooked up back-to-back. When
the day's work was done the crew simply switched their base of
operations to the cab of the other locomotive and went home in style;
no doubt to the great relief of the engine crews...)

~Pete