Layout Tour: The Santa Cruz Northern

For anybody who’s read the major modeling magazines since 1988, you’ve probably come across the proto-freelanced “Santa Cruz Northern” a fictional railroad joint venture between the Western Pacific and the Santa Fe. This partnership was actually quite common, so this adds to the believability of this scenario.

The thing I really enjoy most about the SCN is the way the mainline snakes up over the coast range, you can definitely get a feel for the actual locale being modeled. The railroad grade itself is far from flat as it battles constant grades up and down the pass from San Jose to Santa Cruz.

Super-detailed diesels that seem to represent the 1960’s-1980’s round out the collection of motive power, this is one of the highlights of the layout, surely. It’s so nice to see someone who pays attention to WP equipment by detailing it heavily to represent the actual prototype. Of course, thanks to the joint WP-ATSF venture, you see a smattering of Santa Fe equipment along with the Freelanced Santa Cruz Northern, which seems to have a mostly ALCo hodgepodge of Ex-SP equipment, which has also been detailed as per SP practice, which is pretty neat to see.

There’s a good variety of industry on the layout that’s (mostly) reflective of actual industries found on the ex-SP Santa Cruz branch. Cement reigns king, and a massive cement plant dominates one peninsula of the layout. Redwood logging and lumber products are the other mainstay, with vegetable, fruit and fish canning a close third. A handful of warehouses and other line side industries round out the population of industries on the layout.

There are some really quite impressive railroad related structures on the layout, and they steal the show from the collection of easily recognizable kits you find on the layout. There’s a beautiful scratch built Roundhouse that I believe follows WP practices. On the other side of the layout sits a depot entirely clad in corrugated iron, which is an unusual, but most likely prototype specific building. It looks quite nice.

Anyhow, for being a 21 year old layout, it looks it’s living in an interesting contrast. It’s constantly being improved, or at least it seems so, and yet some of the scenery seems pretty dated. Some of the buildings could use replacement, most of the vehicles are unimpressive; sometimes distractingly lacking in detail, and the trees are a tad unrealistic, but overall the layout is comfortably presentable. I saw some new scenery improvements while I was there, Silflor grass is creeping slowly onto the layout and I spotted some really realistic (and cool!) looking forest undergrowth, ferns and all. I think what I saw was a layout in transition, slowly becoming a really excellent layout one modern scenery technique at a time.

He also does operating sessions 4-6 times a year, and this layout was definitely built for operation! It uses an extensive car card and waybill system to route freight, which by all observations, works quite well.  No lack of motive power or rolling stock to move around either!

If you ever get the chance to visit this layout, I really must recommend that you see it.

Thinning the Herd: When You Have Too Many Trains.

When collecting anything, from bottlecaps to chris-craft yachts, eventually you reach critical mass; that point when either there’s too much stuff. Sometimes this can grow to so many items that it begins to intefere with daily life or a job. I know many model railroaders who have thousands of freight cars, hundreds of locomotives and perhaps a layout to run 1/100th of their fleet at a time. There are brass collectors with entire floor-to-ceiling walls of glass cases of $200-7500 locomotives and rare cars. Lionel collectors are in a league of their own. It’s not uncommon to see a guy who has turned his basement into the New York department store christmas demonstration layout, with yellow and cream boxes covering all four walls. Impressive? Yes. However what use is a collection this complete if it cannot be appreciated by anybody else, the relavance of having one of each type of postwar lionel cattle loader becomes irrelavant if you pass on and your massive collection is fragmented into the 10,000 pieces you took an entire life to build it into in the first place.

LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE
Since I was six years old I’ve gradually purchased HO scale trains. I’d get money from my grandparents and aunts and go spend it at the local GATS show. I had an adept sense for frugality which sometimes worked quite well for me and sometimes backfired spectacularly. I can honestly say that I’ve only paid retail for less than 6 of my 50+ locomotives in my collection, and ironically the ones I bought new usually fell apart faster than the junkers I bought and repaired. Until about a year ago I used to do this with freight cars, buying anything I liked and running it on my layout, until I discovered the detail of Accurail, Kadee and Intermountain cars, but that’s another story.

Of course buying junkers has an incredible benefit; if researched, some of the older cars (especially AHM, Ambriod, and Roundhouse) offering were based on some very eyecatchingand unusual prototypes. These were (and still are) a pleasure to find, rebuild and redetail. The only problem with junkers is occasionally you put the rosy colored glasses of “oh! this old MDC shay doesn’t run now, but if I spend some extra time working on it, despite some missing parts, perhaps I can get it running and looking nice. and for $5, I suppose I can’t afford NOT to buy it..” Yeah. er… no.

With new cars, especially the meticulously decorated cars now offered RTR from Atlas, Athearn, Intermountain and others are so intoxicating when seeing them on the shelf of the hobby shop. Seeing that Atlas billboard reefer and thinking about a whole string of fancifully decorated reefers carrying pickles, choclate, baby food, meat, sausage casings, fruit, vegetables and other perishables…until you realize that they outlawed billboard reefers in 1936….and your modeling the mid 1950’s.

Restraint is the Key

Setting yourself a particular modeling year isn’t just for Jack Burgess. I HIGHLY reccomend that you choose an era, or a specific year and stick to it. Choosing, say, 1954 would keep you from buying 100 billboard reefers, Second generation diesels, ultra colorful 40′ boxcars, and still be able to run steam on your layout. Choosing 1974 would pretty much give you a nice range of “modern” equipment in shiny new appearance with a small handful of 1950’s era equipment. An earlier era, like 1904 would be a challenge, probably requiring a lot of scratchbuilding, which would save you money by not purchasing 100’s of kits. I’ve been tempted to break my era entirely and model Tunnel motors and GP40X’s, but then I see where my real interest lies, small mainline steam, and keep focused. Focusing my modeled year has undoubtedly saved my thousands of dollars and unnecessary desires for random (and expensive) pieces of equipment.

Minimize your “Project shelf”

This is ever harder than restraint, once you have chosen and era, you typically would buy a huge pile of stuff for the trains you want to model, and I’ll bet not all of it is ready to run. Furthermore I’ll bet that some of the stuff you want for your layout will be unique and would sometimes require extensive redetailing or kitbashing to make your model look like it’s real-life counterpart. As I began seriously modeling, these projects seemed to appear and multiply. I have two doodlebugs made from harriman coaches and halfed GP40 frames floating around in my workshop along with 2 dozen steam locomotive projects and a slew of “bad-order” freight cars. Oh, and did I mention the project list doubled when I went DCC two years ago…yup, decoders for all! *sigh*

The other half of this equation is the stack, shelf, pile or cabinets filled with unbuilt kits of all types any modeler worth their salt has. Building a shake the box kit is worth it just as a diversion from larger projects sometimes and it’s always nice to have a few lying around, but you go to a couple of train shows and then your modeling space is covered in kits for buildings, freight cars in plastic wood and resin, locomotives in metal and plastic and then suddenly a few evening projects turns into what seems like a years worth of work, and what do you do in the meantime while staring at the pile of kits? Why purchase more of course!

Get your screwdriver, glue and NMRAgauge, because you should finish some of those car kits. Now. You’re already spending time reading this blog, you could have put together an Athearn Boxcar or converted an older N scale car with Micro-Trains couplers or started kitbashing an On3(0) flatcar, or begun thinking about your next layout.

Don’t buy the chicken before it hatches.

I cannot tell you how many buildings I have purchased over the years for my layout, only to optimistically think while planning a new layout “oh, It’ll fit” and once having laid the track and constructed the building to find out that it doesn’t. It’s always nice to have a stash of buiding kitbashing parts handy, but one box leads to a chest of drawers leads to a dresser leads to a dresser, toolbox, small parts box and two moving boxes filled with building kit parts…and the built buildings scooped up at trainshows for nothing cover shelves. They all need to go.

The roster of your locomotive collection exceeds any sensible ratio!

I was, and still am an engine fan. A couple of years ago I had more operable engines than operable, reliable freight and pasenger cars. That has since reversed with an influx of cash, but again the fleet has grown full of “fat”, either poorly detailed or freight cars with sub-par operating characteristics. The other thing to watch out for is too many unique cars in what should be a sea of Black and Boxcar red. You might want to take a closer look at some of your freight cars sometime and see how crude the details might be on some of your older offerings. You might as well do the best option, upgrade or sell. Be realistic witht the amount of time you can dedicate to projects (see above) and decide how many cars you REALLY want to upgrade and how many you can comfortably live without.
A highly detailed, nicely weathered and perfectly operating small fleet of cars is more impressive to any visitor than a vast sea of dusty, crappy looking, shiny plastic-with-badly-pad-printed-lettering rolling stock.

With locomotives it’s another story. That story is for another time though. Stay Tuned.

SVLS Spring Meet 2009

From 5/16/09 – 5/17/09 RailfanHunter’s club, the Sacramento Valley Live Steamers (SVLS, had the annual spring meet. This year was one of the rare occasions that the steam locomotives actually outnumbered the diesels! I also had my first steam locomotive operating experience when I got to opertate a 9-car Southern Pacific Daylight consist. I spent most of my time operating the club’s SW1500, it is my favorite locomotive on the club’s roster. I would say I spent a good 6 hours operating the SW1500, over the 2-day period. Of course you still need time to BS with the other guys, and I did that too. one of the funnest things that I have ever done at the club also occured during this meet, when I and three other people operated a 26-car train, and each of us worked a different part of it. I got to work the end of the train. When almost everybody went home, I had the task of collecting all of the club owned freight cars, and switched tham back into storage.

All and all it was a very fun weekend, and I can’t wait for the fall meet.

Model What Used to Be: Abandoned Trackage.

Since the beginning of the railroads not every commercial venture between two steel rails has always worked out for the better. There are over 10,000 miles of abandoned right of way in the US alone, probably much more if you count yards, sidings and industrial spurs.

Often, abandoned right of ways tell almost, if not more of a story then the active lines you’d model on your railroad. Most times bridges were left in place, signals still standing (some still operating years after the track has been abandoned!) Of course embankments, ballast and the right of way itself will remain until redevelopment or nature destroys it.

Railroads merge and traffic dries up, creating duplicate routes and usually the one that’s costlier to maintain is abandoned. Case and point would be the Southern Pacific’s Altamont Pass line. It was steeper in grade and featured sharper curves to the rival Western Pacific mainline just across Alameda Creek. Rails were removed in the 1980’s when much of the traffic along the line had disappeared, and what was left was easily served by the WP mainline (namely the Kaiser Gravel Plant at Radum, between Livermore & Pleasanton, Calif.)

The mess of industrial trackage that can still be found in most American cities that experienced industrial growth before 1940 is another interesting example. Really tight curves, crossovers, diamonds, double slip switches and small yards would be utilized to efficiently serve the major industries of the day. Often the buildings were built with the curvature of the railroad tracks in mind, as were fence and property lines. One can trace former industrial trackage without great difficulty as long as it hasn’t been completely redeveloped. Many older industries simply left the trackage in place and removed their mainline connection (usually a switch) sometimes they would have a few obsolete railroad cars delivered before this would happen to be turned into storage.

When railroads fail completely, due to lack of traffic or commercial business reasons, the right of way is either left to rust or ripped up. All infrastructure except for ballast is sold off and the grade is left to nature. Most often when this happens, especially if it’s in a scenic location near affluent residencies, a “rails to trails” program is started, which usually paves the right of way with a bike path. The Southern Pacific’s San Ramon Branch is an excellent example of this, as is the Northwestern Pacific’s line to Tiburon. It would be interesting to model a little paved pathway with bikers and joggers with evidence that tracks once existed there.

Disasters can also cause a line to be abandoned. The Eel river plagued operations on the NorthWestern Pacific railroad up in Norther California’s Redwood Empire. The river would rise more than 40 feet, washing out bridges, flooding tunnels, destroying buildings and eroding embankments. Eventually the line was so unprofitable that it was abandoned. Plenty of other hard-to-maintain railroad lines have had their rails pulled up.

Here’s some excellent examples of abandoned trackage:

Look Beyond the Docksider: 0-4-0’s.

The following is quoted verbatim from a Baldwin Sales Catalogue:

Four couplerd locomotives have all the weight on the driving wheels, and are suitable for contractor’s’ or industrial service, and also for light switching work on railroad yards and terminals. These engines have short wheel bases, and they can be safely operated on sharp curves and switches. The smaller classes can easily traverse curves of fifty feet radius. For short runs, or for switching service eherre a large fuel and water supply are not required, saddle or side tanks can be used and the fuel carried in the cab or on a rear extention of the engine frames. For longer runs, a seperate tender should be employed. If desired, the tender tank is made with a slopin back, this giving the engineman a better view when backing up. A seperate tender is also an advantage on exceptionally narrow track, as it admist of a lower center of gravity than if the tank were placed on the boiler.
In tank-frame locomotives, as illustrated (below) the frames consist of steel plates, between which the water tank is place. This construction lowers the center of gravity; an important featur where the gauge is unusually narrow. These engines are fitted with a simple design of Marshall Valve gear, having all it’s parts outside the wheels where they are easily accessible. This style had a through trial on light industrial locomotives operating under the most severe conditions.

Here’s a pretty extensive gallery of what these little locomotives looked like. Most modelers know of the dozens of (usually crude) models in various scales that have been produced with the 0-4-0 wheel arrangement. This gallery will hopefully give you some different and fun ideas for kitbashing a more unique looking locomotive.

It’s the perfect power for a really modest shortline operation, like the Indiana Northern.

If you don’t want it operable, it makes excellent shop clutter in a detailed interior scene.

Some were used by larger industries to handle cars around their plants.

Mines used them to switch cars around the loading tipples.

They’re a very down-and-dirty workaday locomotive, this small scale railroad operation would be easy to model and fun too.

They were the “trackmobile” of many industries from the 1860’s through the 1960’s.

Not all of them looked good, here’s a locomotive nothing short of hideous.

Looks like this one worked on some noticeable grades…look at the size of that sand dome!

This unusual side-bunker 0-4-0T would be an interesting thing to model, presumably coal or wood was loaded in through the sides of the cab, rather than the rear.

Most operations kept them running on bubble gum and bailing wire, here’s a good example, note the odd oil tank cobbled together from scrap parts.

Working large industries like quarries helped these little locos earn their keep….

…until trucks took over the jobs that the venerable 0-4-0T used to handle. Caterpillar, Euclid and other off-road trucks took over duties at the construction contractors, mines and quarries in the 1950’s and 1960’s, while other industries purchased tractor-trailer trucks to handle their freight or bought a small diesel switcher or trackmobile to handle their rail traffic. The 1960’s was the last decade to see these little locomotives in north america, they were either saved to operate in a tourist railroad, or stuffed and mounted in a park, but thousands of these workaday locomotives met the scrapper’s tourch, perhaps to be turned into truck parts!

Modeling Gaffe 3 Abuse of Retaining Walls

Ever since I was a small child, looking wide-eyed at the photos in modeling magazines, I always cringed when I saw an impossibly tall and long retaining wall. They just aren’t realistic. Yes, there’s the Reno & Alameda Corridor “Trenches”, Yes there are extensive retaining walls in MODERN transit systems, but on a mainline in the middle of nowhere? Certianly not!

 

Retaining walls are meant to hold dirt, loose rock and other debris back from buildings, rail lines and roads. Well designed retaining walls also reduce erosion or landslides. What most modelers don’t know is that most retaining walls are usually overbuilt. I’m not sure where the modeler’s cliche of a rickety old retaining wall barely supporting the earth behind it comes from. It’s all too common though, perhaps unwillingness to study something so ordinary as a retaining wall leads many modelers to freelance it?

Click here for a detailed diagram showing the wide variety of retaining wall construction methods.

Of course there’s always the “colorado” excuse for sheer, 15 story rock faces with the Transcon-style 4 track mainline snaking it’s way along a ledge, sure it looks spectacular, but where else but Colorado, Switzerland, or Canada are you going to find such a place? Well for starters, on a model Railroad I guess!

Even in colorado, the retaining walls look rickety and somewhat tall, but they aren’t. Look closer here.

The abuse is atrocious. On one HO model railroad there was a field stone retaining wall 12 inches tall (86 scale feet!) suppposedly to “keep the bottom track visually open to viewers”. Think of that, an 8 story building, holding back millions of yards of dirt, and all with fieldstone?! I think NOT. Even a reinforced concrete retaining wall would have to be built like a dam to hold back those forces!

A favorite use by modelers of retaining walls is the “stair step” railroad look. It’s in no way realistic, yet we see it time and again on our model railroads? WHY? Model Railroader Magazine had an article a decade back showing various ways to avoid this unfortunate design trend effectively. They suggested snaking the higher mainline over the lower, creating a series of “honeymoon” tunnels and somewhat steep hillsides, which looked more natural and visually appealing.

(Photographer Unknown)

Model railroaders love to use retaining walls at junctions, and here they (finally) have a place. They can range in height, the lower the better, as long as the embankment isn’t too steep and it looks like it could hold the embankment back and take the intense vibrations experienced by a heavy freight train rolling atop the embankment.

So, remember that when in doubt, don’t install any old retaining wall, install the right one for the job OR just skip the needs for them entirely and wisely plan your railroad’s grade to avoid the use of them wherever possible. You railroad foreman will be very happy if he doesn’t have to maintain another huge, 12 story fieldstone wall liable to cumble into bits any second.

Interacting with Miniature Railroading has a NEW look!

I’m pleased to announce the new colorscheme for Interacting with Miniature Railroading! (No, it’s not based on a railroad’s color scheme for those curious minds)

Check out the new banner, a time-lapse photo I look on my model railroad, and you’ll find a few other improvements.

I’m beginning to re-write some of my articles that were a good idea in theory..but weren’t as helpful as you might have wished. The first article that has been throughroly re-vamped is “Micro Layouts are a Blast!”

Next will probably be updated tutorials on how to do stuff, and you’ll see them in the next few weeks among the other new material.

I have made many promises in the past for articles that I never got around to writing, the list is below, and will be a guide to what you’ll be reading on this site in the next few weeks as I tie up these loose ends.

 

If YOU have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

List of future articles:

-Building a Photo Diorama for you model Trains (re-write, new photos)

-Modeling 4 lane concrete roadways (re-write, new photos)

-We build a Pizza-Style Micro Layout (New)

-How to weather: Tank Cars. Livestock cars, Hoppers, Gondolas, Steel boxcars, trussrod boxcars, old passenger cars, streamlined passenger cars, flatcars, Covered hoppers (both grain and cement), cabeese, diesels, and electric locomotives.

-How to weather steam locomotives (a mulit-part series)

-How to model an orange grove using new techniques

-How to detail and scratchbuild a citrus packing house from photographs of the real thing

-More building and structure plans

- N scale structure articles

-A review of the new Bachmann HO GE-45 tonner (with siderods!)

-and more!

The Fun of Lionel

After many years of being a “serious” prototype modeler, I was very pleasantly surprised when I had a chance to play with a classic Lionel layout today. I had shunned Lionel stuff for being unrealistic and bulky, and cringed every time I saw that third rail, but today NONE of that mattered. 

Tugging the throttle of a mighty ZW transformer is an experience I’ll never forget: The sheer POWER. Watching that New Haven Alco FA hum to life and see the streak of faded orange zoom around and around followed by brightly colored cars hitting the 027 curves at 250 scale miles per hour was just sheer joy!

Half the fun of Lionel is the SOUND. Now I’m not talking TMCC sound and all that modern “prototypical” sounding stuff, I mean:

-The powerful hum of a ZW transformer

-The growl of the locomotive as you crank up the throttle

-The cacophony of steel-on-steel that a good consist of cars makes at speed

-The rapturous clunking of a 10 car train clomping across a 90 degree crossing

-The electric “GNEEEEEEE” of operating a remote switch

-The  noisy tinplate trackwork flexing and moving against the plywood base 

-The various ancillary metal sounds that blend into the background providing a fully enveloping world of pure audio magic.

Owning KATO diesels and running on nicely laid HO track, the rush of activity, the thrill of being trackside with my models has faded over the years due to the sound systems not being able to capture the heavy track sounds, just the high-pitched steam and diesel sounds. Lionel managed to capture that, and with the playful and bright colors recapturing the gleeful feeling of  being 6 again with my friends’ CNJ 2-4-2 pulling a variety of rolling stock around what seemed to be a huge sheet of 4X8 plywood.

What a rush, a feast for the eyes and ears. I recommend rediscovering LIONEL again if for nothing else than the sheer fun!

It reminded me what the purest fun of model railroading is like and renewed my enthusasiam for trains and model railroading in general.

The Economic Bailout that Never Came- PennCentral

For many hardworking people of the Northeastern US, it was the economic bailout that never came. The Penn Central was - until very recently – the largest corporate bankruptcy in history. To fully appreciate the story and it’s staggering effect on railroad and corporate history, listen from the perspective of the average worker. This average worker doesn’t work behind a desk (and if he does, it’s in a caboose) he works in the crumbling infrastructure that was the deadly hallmark of differed maintenance. The PC had to deal with more than 200 derailments a month, more than 3,000 miles of very poorly maintained track, 300 MILES of damaged freight cars, and more than two dozen derelict maintenance facilities that are inefficient and dangerous. Every attempt to modernize their operations to at the very least make them save to work around were halted due to massive debt. Unlike Lehman brothers and all the modern “paper pushing” companies today, you can see, hear and appreciate the consequences of differed maintenance.

 

This isn’t the way to run a railroad. Watch the 1974 film (featuring non-stop Railroad action) that was a helpless plea to congress for funding.

 

In 1976, congress formed the Consolidated Rail Corporation or CONRail, which went public in the 1980’s and was run so well that it was merged into the NS & CSX, roughly split in half.

Join the Fun! Micro Layouts are a Blast!

Micro Layouts are probably the most beneficial section of the hobby due to the fact that they, in the definition given by Micro Layout compiler and modeler Carl Arendt: “Micro layouts are small model railroads, usually less than three or four square feet in area, that nonetheless have a clear purpose and excellent operating capability. “

FOUR MAIN TYPES OF LAYOUTS

There are four main types of micro layouts, and about 80% of micro layouts are based on these concepts:

 

1. The Pizza Layout is a classic. Originally devised for HO or N scale, the pizza layout is a circle of track, usually scenicked. Rarely are these layouts build with any other trackwork like spurs, but there are notable exceptions. The term originated from either the pizza like look of the loop of track or the fact that some Pizza layouts were built in pizza boxes!

2. The Ingelnook Switching Puzzle dates back to 1978 and is the brainchild of Allen Wright, according to this source. The ingenious 5/3/3 ratio of 5 cars on the main and capacities for 3 cars on both sidings has been lauded as the “perfect” switching ratio. This type of layout is very portable and mentally challenging to shunt or switch cars around with. The Inglenook puzzle exists in real life on some railroads all around the world, like Italy and the US.

3. The Traverser is another very popular method of switching in even less space then the Inglenook. The problem is that a transfer table, a rather unusual piece of railroad equipment that is rarely found outside of railroad backshops, is the hallmark of this plan. This eliminates the need for switches, but realistically limits the modeling subject to a handful of prototype locations. Some variations on this layout can be found on Carl’s site.

4. Ridiculously small micro layouts like the curious “dime layout” that uses a US 10 cent piece as the inner portion of track in what one could term a “bite sized doughnut” layout. (In keeping with the food theme presented by the pizza layout. ) The coin conducts electricity and the outer rail is bent to an improbable radius. Here’s photos of one in action!

5. (Not Illustrated) would have to be the sector plate layouts. I really don’t like sector plates, because they’re not very realistic, and none exist in real life unlike turntables and transfer tables. They do add flexibility through the ability to move an entire train from one track to another, which is interesting.

These are certainly not all of the types of micro layouts out there. Some base their switching maneuvers around a turntable, some are actually small “traditional” loop layouts that feature sidings and the like, somewhat similar to MR 4X8 foot project layouts, but squeezed down to less than 4 square feet. Others offer unorthodox track-work or very complex track age with tight curves and clearances and lots of #4 switches.

THEMES

There are infinite stories a model railroad can tell, and micro layouts push the boundaries of the traditional railroad themes. Some of the more traditional layout themes, like Anthracite coal mining, or modern intermodal terminals would be an impractical. The interesting part of micro layouts is that you can create small portions of large industries and use the micro layout as a small vignette to portray that specific industry.

Some of the more popular themes include:

1. Railroad back shops. Rebuilding cars and locomotives required a lot of specialized switching maneuvers and is one of the few prototypical places for turntables and transfer tables.

2. Wharves and seaside scenes are always popular. From the dock to a point of interchange, or from a mine to the dock. Some layouts even incorporate ”live loads” of coal, ore or soil that dump from the railroad cars into the awaiting vessel. Car float operations are also another interesting facet of this theme. A good number of micro layouts feature lighthouses.

3. Urban Traction is a great space saving theme to explore. It’s one of the few places in which railroading can be accomplished with ultra-sharp curves and overhead wire. The scratch-built trolley cars, street cars and MOW motor flats whizzing around a small layout make for great fun.

4. Mining and Logging operations are popular subjects for micro layouts, although It seems silly to have a lumber mill 5 inches from the stand of trees being harvested..the same goes for most mining layouts.

5.  Using unusual gauges narrow gauge railroads are popular. Examples like Gn15, (1:29 scale using 1:87 HO gauge track, which scales to 15″ industrial gauge in G.) or On3 (1:48 O scale using scale 36″ gauge track) On30 (O scale on HO gauge track representing 30″ narrow gauge) Sn3 (1:64 S scale on their 36″ gauge track, which is almost HO gauge track)   HOn3 (HO 36″ narrow gauge) or HOn30 (HO scale on N 1:160 gauge track)  some crazy modelers even use Nn3 (N scale on Z gauge track)  are the backbone of the Narrow Gauge Movement.

6. Food related industries are popular. Winery layouts, Brewery operations, pickle factories and even a maple syrup factory are all represented among the  cadre of micro layouts.  

7. Brick works, Lime kilns, Railroad Tie creosoting plants and other realistic narrow gauge industrial railroads are very popular modeling subjects, this is another portion of micro layouts in which you can make a realistic layout in a small space.

8. The last main theme is dictated by the package it comes in. I’m building a shoebox layout, which when completed will be a small mining operation in HOn3 (The photo shows the plan in full HO gauge.) The packages can range from an orange crate, to a wine box to a shoe box, or even smaller, like a CD case. The business card layout is by far some of the most entertaining modeling I’ve seen. These unusual puzzle layouts can be excellently designed.

 

 

 

A small mining operation in HO scale is the theme, still a lot to be decided upon. Here are some photos utilizing my shoebox.

The Hopper will go from the mine (above track) out onto the Ore Trestle, where it will be dumped into a barge or equivalent.

For More inspiration, please visit his site, which features HUNDREDS of fantastic layouts that can be built on a shelf, in a briefcase, inside a pizza box or a shoebox, as a traditional diorama, or even as small as a CD case.

http://carendt.com/