Modeling Gaffe 9- The Peninsula Metropolis

The “Modeling Gaffe” Series Returns!

 

All too often we resort to placing buildings AFTER the track has been laid, which isn’t quite how you should approach it. Planning before you build is everything, and while nobody sticks to their plan 100%, it can prevent such a visually unappealing disaster like the peninsula metropolis.

Many model railroad cities posses density problems, density being defined in this article for ease of understanding as this: A single family home is low density, a rowhouse is medium density, and an apartment hi-rise is high density. All too often, in as little as two city blocks a model railroad city can go from rural farmhouses to massive skyscrapers. Obviously this is not a realistic way to approach such planning and could easily be remedied with a creative use of backdrops if you must have a city and country scene close together in a layout room.

Sure, cities like San Francisco are built on peninsulas, but those are surrounded by water. (usually the first place where a city develops is near a body of water) Lakes, Rivers, Streams, Seas and Oceans are all interesting things to model and many cities posses such features near their downtowns.

Cities that are rail-served have their railroad lines either on cheap land or flat land, and where was that land usually? Near a body of water. (unless it’s a wealthy area) Railroads usually follow the paths of least resistance and frequently follow riverbanks, canals (like the Erie Canal or the St. Lawerence Seaway) or even lakeshores. These naturally smooth and flat areas of land also lend themselves to large railroad facilities such as yards and engine servicing facilities, but beware of flood hazards and perhaps model some sort of levee or seawall to keep nature at bay.

Returning to the gaffe at hand, the Peninsula Metropolis is rarely, if ever, going to be an easy to maintain or build endeavor. Because you typically have to lay the track before you detail or build any of the major scenery (you know, like actually ENJOY running your trains a bit before doing scenery?) you have a really excellent chance of damaging your trackwork while you lean over your mainline to plop in that aparement block or downtown scene. Maintenence would probably also be a headache, dusting and repairing structures is difficult if you really have to reach to access what you want to fix. This can be avoided by creating a smaller peninsula, but then you run the risk of losing realestate for your metropolis.

Theoretically, you could bury the mainline along the peninsula under the city itself, not unlike the approach into NYC’s Grand Central Station, but what’s the fun in that? (and if built without competent access hatches and bullet-proof trackwork, why bother?) Similarly you could elevate the mainline, but it would look silly with all but the most gentle curvature unless you’re modeling an actual elevated railway, Japan, or Britian.

Most model railroaders aren’t urban planners, however it doesn’t take one to create a believable city. Think of the types of buildings you would typically see next to the right-of-way in most North American Cities….mostly older buildings thanks to the railroad spurring development of major cities and allowing them to grow to their current levels by efficiently moving goods and people, especially in from 1865-1965 and again today. Prime trackside buildings would include spacious brick warehouses, perhaps large department stores or Manufacturing Industry. If you have to model a commercial district you can mix up the buildings a bit, but the more modern buildings probably wouldn’t be built near the tracks without some regard to noise abatement.

If you’re modeling after 1920, most cities were mindful towards grade-separating the major roads from the railroads for safety reasons. You have no doubt seen overpasses on a model railroad, and that’s an interesting and common feature to add to a city scene.

Most of all, the most important thing you can do is spend time with a map of a city you’d like to model on your railroad. Note the characteristics of trackside structures and how they’re laid out both in how the roads are planned to how the railroad snakes through the district. For a HUGE map of Chicago’s Rail system, check out this map at mappery.com. http://mappery.com/maps/Chicago-Train-Map.jpg Try to avoid the peninsula metropolis at all costs, please?

5 Modular Layout Concepts

Using stiff paper cutouts, you can play with modular layout concepts without filling an entire sketchbook full of shapes. I took one sheet of paper and made inch-to-a-foot scale (1:12) representations of my current collection of layout modules, and then went to work developing a new way to re-arrange them.

All of these are designed to fit in a 10X12 foot space.

The Highgrove Division:

The Downtown Warehouse District

The Tidewater Coast Line

The Urban Junction Trunk Line

The Foothil Branchline

With 25 days left in the layout contest, keep sending your layout plans along for a chance to see your plan come to life as a layout right here on this website and win a prize while you’re at it!

My Official New Layout Contest!

First of All the Rules and Prizes:

The Layout will have to utilize the unobstructed 10X12 foot space allocated for the layout, but keep in mind that you don’t have to use all that space. If you can come up with an interesting, fun to operate, and smaller plan you may be a winner just as easily as someone who takes up that much space. Also keep in mind that you must use the module shapes provided in the photo at the bottom of this post. One of these Modules is known as the “Midland Industrial District” and is a small 1.5′X7′ switching layout whose plan can be found by clicking here.

The layout must be fun to operate and incorporate a smoothly laid mainline and plenty of interesting industrial trackage. I also require some nice scenic open areas and would prefer to avoid a spaghetti bowl. For inspiration, check out the list of layout concepts below.

Okay, to sweeten the deal for my new Layout concept the winner of my trackplanning contest will recieve a certificate for one weathered car or locomotive ($60.00 in value) or a Walther’s Trainline GP-15-1 in Chicago & Northwestern Colors or painted Missouri Pacific blue, but Unlettered. It’s a DC locomotive with a smooth drive and probably not hard to install DCC in.

The Contest will run for 30 days from August 10th through September 10th. The winner must provide a reliable e-mail address so I can contact them to let them know they’ve won.

The Basic Concepts: (Choose ONE theme and run with it)

1. Is a tidewater layout, lots of sloughs, saltponds, one huge salt plant and a handful of other industries. lots of water, but no real port scene, perhaps an abandoned cannery or something. (Examples in real life would be Monterey, Calif. Alviso, Calif. Crockett/Hercules/Antioch, Calif. and into the Delta)

2. Is a portion of Southern Pacific’s coast line near San Miguel Calif. I’d scratchbuild that beautiful mission and most of the unique downtown structures that can be found around it. It is the most prototypically ambitious project of the bunch and would require some research

3. Is a depiction of the Alameda Belt line right here in Alameda. Trains in the street, that huge life bridge and a really huge cannery structure. The problem is not a single thing in alameda is easy to scratchbuild and would take a long time to get running because of the lift bridge and specialized trackage.

4. A user-suggested layout idea, left via comments at the bottom of this post.

GENERAL INFORMATION:
1. What Industries would you like to center your layout around?
Depends on the Concept you choose to build your plan around (of the four chosen above)

If it’s the San Miguel Layout:
-Camp Robertson in the Cold War, lots of Military Vehicle and troop train traffic.
-Grain (pre covered hopper)
-Packing Houses for fruits and vegetables.
-Lumber Warehouse
-Oil Company Dealers
-Box Factory

If it’s the Tidewater Layout:
-Docks and a Warehouse
-Oil Company
-Cannery
-Cement Plant (Could have a narrow Gauge connection)
-Salt Plant (Could have a narrow gauge connection)
-Boat Building Plant
-A carfloat slip or ferry connection
-Steel Fabrication Plant

If it’s the Alameda Belt Line layout, I’ll provide a list of actual industries.

HERE IS THE LIST OF AVAILABLE MODULES TO USE WHEN TRACKPLANNING:

2. What problems/issues (if any) did you encounter while building your Model
Railroad?

Tracklaying is my greatest enemy and I aim to overcome this issue with this particular layout.

3. For the current project, what scale are you planning to use?
HO 1:87

4. Do you wish to incorporate narrow gauge? Yes No If yes, which gauge? Maybe, if you want, some small point to point HOn3 for industrial purposes (Salt Plant? Dockside Warehouse? Quarry Spur? Large Cement Plant?)

5. What particular prototype? (For example, New York Central or Santa Fe)
Southern Pacific, AT&SF, maybe WP

6. If no particular prototype, please describe what type of theme you have in mind
for your layout.
My Freelanced Mission Valley and Pacific will play a central role to the layout’s train operations… A quick snapshot would be Small steam, (all smaller than USRA 2-8-2) and early diesels (Baldwins, EMD FT’s, etc.) with 40′ freight cars and 60′ Harriman Coaches.

7. What era? (For example, 1940’s through the end of steam.)
1954 exactly. Perhaps the occasional jaunt to 1939.

OPERATIONS:
1. What type of operations?
Point-to-Point or Continuous Loop? Either is Fine, or elements of both.
Multi-train YES, but not necessary.
Hump or Classification Yard NO Switching/Peddler Freight YES
Passenger YES Interchange YES
Lake or River Ferry YES Port/Barge Terminal YES

2. How many potential operators? 2-3 Number of trains in continuous operation? 2-3

3. Operators will be: adults 2, perhaps a third guy as a brakeman.

4. Do the operators have a basic knowledge of how real railroads operate?

5. Will you require central train control systems and signaling? No, although that would be cool, that’s something to consider for sidings.

AVAILABLE SPACE:
1. Where is the space? Second Floor Room, 12X10 space in a much larger room.
2. Does the room have climate control and dust control? Not Really.

5. Minimum aisle space. 24″, but 18″ if it’s necessary.

6. Bench height? 48″ with NO GRADES please.

7. Is “duck-under” or lift out construction acceptable for access to certain parts
of the layout? Yes, Duckunders are fine, although I’d prefer some sort of lift bridge like my old layout, which was a 2X2 square of mainline that lifted out.

8. Maximum acceptable reach to track 30 inches.

9. Is it acceptable to put track anywhere on your layout? Y N If no, what
areas are restricted? (Describe)
Track is fine anywhere as long as it looks realistic.

10. What ratio of track to scenery? (e.g. 50%-50%)
Make the Industrial Districts vast mazes, but as soon as you hit the country, a single track (or double track) mainline at most through rolling scenery.

=Are there any special under layout requirements?
Since the modules are 48″ off the floor, it will obviously be used for the storage of boxes, shelves etc.

= Minimum Radius Requirements: 24″ Mainline Radius, as tight as necessary on industrial trackage, and will allow for 15″ on spurs. I’d prefer #6 switches for sidings and #4 switches for industrial leads.

-What season of the year do you wish to represent?
Spring or Early Summer (Feb-May)

IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE QUESTIONS, feel free to post inquiries below in the comments section or visit the offical contest thread either at Railroad-Line Forums or at Trainboard.com.

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.

Atlas Turntable Kitbash- From Wooden Wonder to SP Common Standard.

The Atlas turntable has been a staple of model railroading for more than 40 years, and still sells well today. However despite it being one of the most mechanically well-designed turntables in existance, it is a model of a very unusual prototype. Wooden plank turntables did and still do exist today. The wooden plank turntabe was used in the late 1800’s for street railways, cable car operations and small industrial railroads to not only provide a means to rotate motive power but also to serve as an accessible pedestrian or vehicular thoroughfare when not in use. It also would have been installed in areas where a turntable pit would have been dangerous or not feasibly built. Despite these advantages, they were expensive to maintain and all but a very select few survive today. Most, if not all of them were “armstrong” turntables in which an operator had to push on the piece of equipment to get it to rotate. Other examples of armstrong turntables include “gallows” style turntables and very early cast-iron turntables, all dating from the beginning of railroading forward.

Due to the fact that the wooden plank turntable is an extremely rare type of turntable, it shouldn’t be on as many layouts as you see them on. The benefit of the Atlas model is that you don’t have to modify your benchwork in any way to use the turntable, which is a major plus compared to nearly any other model on the market.

In this next series of articles I aim to get a solid, non-rotating turntable while achieving the detail of a Southern Pacific Common Standard 100′ turntable, albeit selectively compressed. It won’t be an easy project, but it’ll reward you with an excellent looking and operating piece of equipment that’ll always work well.

The Concept

The Idea is to cover the rotating top of the turntable, to legnthen it to the outer edges of the device and create a highly detailed steel turntable structure to be visually appealing and eyecatching.

From a mechanical standpoint, It’ll have wires soldered to the rails on the deck that’ll be fed up through a tube to the rails at track level. The whole turntable will swivel from this central tube which is glued to the former top of the turntable.

A new concrete pit will be scratchbuild out of acrylic sheet and painted. Pit rails will be installed to guide the outrigger wheels on either end of the bridge.

The extended edges will allow a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 (with Vandy Tender) to turn itself around, which was impossible before the modification. This opens up the turntable to medium sized motive power and it can also turn an SD-45T-2 with ease as well.

The first step was proving my concept before jumping head first into a complex project, so I cut a large doughnut shape from grocery bag paper electrical tape. Testing out the false bottom concept was a success, it turns fine as long as there’s clearance over the former wooden top of the turntable.

Follow along as we venture into the complex world of constructing a turntable from wood, brass, styrene and acrylic sheet.

Here’s a sneak peek…

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:

Modeling Gaffe 7- Industrial Afterthoughts

How many times have you seen, or attempted to do the following:
“well there’s this oddly shaped space on my layout, what should I do with it?….That’s IT! I’ll fill it with an industry, I’ll add a siding…PERFECT.”

How could you possibly go wrong? Well, if you’re like the person who placed their industry out in the middle of nowhere, straddled by four track mainlines on either side, you’ve gone wrong.

Perhaps it’s a smarter idea to think of industry placement like a player of Sim City…you can’t make tax money if you cover the entire map with roads and railroad tracks. You need an acceptable ratio of buildings to track on your layout, especially those that are NOT served by the railroad.

Large industries, even stip mining operations have small, medium or large towns where the workers live. They may be as clearly defined and spectacular as The Companeria Minera de Pinoles mining town in Penoles Mexico , they may be as blended into the residental and commercial areas as some US cities, with homes and businesses right next to the tracks.
(Photo by Jack Delano, LOC.gov)

Only rarely did the people of the early 20th century live far away from their place of employment. If this was the case, the railroad probably provided some safe and relatively fast means of conveyance, like a employee’s special passenger train, or sometimes the company hired buses if the roads were ok. Only after 1945 did people consider the idea of suburbs where work was placed in the middle of a long commute in either direction. Sure, large cities had some nearby small towns that had commuter or mixed freight rail connections, but it wasn’t a staple of every major, medium and even small sized city like it is today with vast tracts of isolated homes in a desert of suburban sprawl.

Major industries were often placed near rivers for a cheap, reliable source of water to use in their factories, for barge or ship transporation, to provide hydroelectric power (like Northeastern US mills) or just as a place to dump toxic waste in pre-EPA days. You will probably find the oldest industrial buildings along a river.

If they couldn’t be near water, they tried to pick a large, flat piece of cheap land that featured minimal vegetation. This would allow road and rail access to be easy. Automobile, Aircraft, and other large manufacturing plants follow this patter wherever they can. Some industries, like stamp mills and ore refineries took advantage of steep hillsides, but they were just as at home on level ground as on a hillside.

The only other factor that large industries considered was the location of raw materials or parts for manufacture. I noticed when looking at a map of Birmingham, AL it was uncanny that the steel mills were geographically equidistant between the ore deposits in Iron Mountain to the south and the coal fields to the north! Grain silos are centralized industries too. They need only a railroad mainline and grain fields surrounding the silo to prosper. Lumber mills are another obvious example. Placed near a river or railroad connection was preferrable, but they always had to be near the trees. They were often dismantled and moved as loggers slashed and burned the forests of the West, East, North ad Southern US.

What does this mean for your model railroad you may ask? A LOT actually.
-Space your raw material harvesting industries (mines, oil fields, grain silos, logging camps, vegetable or fruit packing houses) enough distance from the mills to warrant freight car traffic.
-Place your (grain, ore, lumber, steel, aluminium or oil) mill/refinery as the main industry of a town, and build the town around the industry.
-Make your manufacturing plants the centerpiece of another town altogether, so you can also have a reason to haul your refined product (metal, petroleum products, lumber, or food products) from mills to the manufacturing plant to the warehouses.
-You never see an important, but usually ignored industry THE PRODUCT DISTRIBUTORS take those freight cars full of manufactured goods and transfer them to a warehouse (either by truck or by rail again)
-Finally, the product will reach a warehouse, freight house or cold storage company. The rail-based journey of goods is complete, and look! You needed about 3-6 different types of freight cars to handle the demands of each stage of bringing a specific product to market. The possibilites for realistic railroad operation are endless and with plenty of modelgenic industries out there give it a try!

Modeling Gaffe 5- How am I going to Unload this car?

How many model railroads have you been to where a wide variety of cars are just parked next a (probably inadequately sized) industry with no way to unload even a boxcar?

This irksome trait is found almost all the time in beginner layouts, for which they are excused, but also on too many modelers who consider themselves “serious” railroad modelers. It’s especially annoying when they enjoy superdetailing and weathering their models, while their buildings are either straight-out-of-the-box or simple structure kits. I’d say a majority of model railroad industrial building kits won’t support (regular) rail service. Walther’s has succeeded in making some nicely porportioned kits that look believable enough to support traffic, but most other manufacturers fall short, with a few really excellent exceptions.

More often than not you see modelers ignore the specific hardware found on the cars and either:
-Create inadequate loading docks that are either too high or low for boxcar and reefer traffic.
-Ignoring completely how you’d logically unload a specific type of freight cars, like that gravel old gondola on the coal trestle with a SOLID floor, mimicing a drop-bottom gondola, and failing.
-I VERY rarely see a realistic unloading/loading apparatus for covered hoppers, be them cement, grain, plastics, or sugar. Almost always they disappear under a little metal shed and are “unloaded” as if by magic!
-Woodchip hoppers and scrap steel/structural steel gondolas are frequently just put on the siding, to be “magically (un)loaded”
-An overwhelming majority of modelers ignore TANK CAR unloading apparatuses, despite being repeatedly written about in modeling magazines. (in some cases, all you need is a valved spigot sticking out of the ground.)
-Don’t even get me started about Intermodal Facilities or Piggyback Trailer loading facilities, they’re almost never modeled correctly, and I can say with certianty that only a handful of modelers actually have dedicated the space to these industries that dominate the modern scene.

Team tracks, while oddly ignored by many modelers, provide perhaps THE greatest flexibility of any industry, take little space and can (with proper detailing) accept ANY type of freight car.

The best remedy for addressing this problem is RESEARCH! Go out into the world and take photographs of interesting industrial buildings and attempt to match the details found on them, remember that Industrial buildings only have the bare-essential details on them compared to commercial/residential structures, and we at least must model that bare-bones detail.

IF you’re period modeling, the Library of Congress (US) has the HABS/HAER Historical Building database, with scale drawings, written historical documents and plenty of detail photographs. Also University Libraries or even your local library has plenty of photos of local, state, and sometimes nationally important industrial buildings. Some time spent researching here will benefit you in the future. I’d bet OSHA has modern documents profiling how to safely unload many types of freight cars. Army Transportation Corps manuals also have this information.

Don’t forget to check out modeling magazines or books, some authors really care about this sort of thing, and provide really valuble information about how a freight car was unloaded. Safely and properly.

All the resources for the proper and realistic (un)loading of freight cars are out there, you just have to make the extra effort to find it.

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.

Modeling Gaffe 2 Road Access

These “modeling cliche” articles are intended to engage you, my readers in a debate, not a scathing or arrogant “I’m a better modeler than you”  contest. These are real problems that all too often occur for no good reason on model railroads around the world, and by recognizing it as a problem more people will begin to realize how important these fixes can be towards making your model railroad not only attractive looking, but realistic too.

This is a huge problem on a majority of club layouts around the country, and it’s also present in more home layouts than I really want to know.

Lack of road access.

Roads predated any modern form of transportation and haven’t been replaced by anything since, so why is there a total lack of adequate roads on a model railroad? It doesn’t make sense. Why completely destroy your illusion of a miniature world by omitting roads? Do you think you don’t have enough space? Do you think that the railroad should serve every single building on your model railroad?

Also, with thousands of scale vehicles available in almost every major railroad modeling scale (with the annoying exception of American O gauge 1:48) there is a great incentive to embrace the roads that frequently parallel or cross our scale railroad lines. As woodland scenics successfully proves with their “Auto Scenics” there is a lot of narrative quality based around road vehicles that add a lot of character to a scene on a model railroad. It’s also another fun facet of the hobby, with the 1:87 vehicle club being a stand-alone force in the modeling world with some modelers just building HO scale autos and trucks and ignoring the trains partially or even completely.

The road itself is an incredibly interesting thing to model. From a rutted, muddy logging road, to a shaded gravel lane to a residential street to old concrete highway or even a modern freeway (which have yet to see modeled at all despite them paralleling railroads from the beginning of the Interstate highway system in the 1950’s.)

Check out these models of:
-A dirt parking lot with chain link fence
-A paved county road pitted and old from many harsh winters in CNW territory.
-An Automotive repair and rail-served scrapyard.
-A concrete two-lane road ans coal dealer
-A classic 1970’s era Dairy Queen with an accruately modeled drivethrough curb structure
-A 1970’s era interstate highway bridge over a busy FRISCO mainline
-Accurately modeled concrete street trackage
-An old dead-end street with plenty of essential details added, like the K-rail barriers and red diamond “stop” markers
-Old meets new as a brick-street transitions into modern, wide concrete avenue. Also note the awesome telephone company work yard with fleet of telephone co. Vans.
-Beautiful 4 lane avenue with grade crossing turn-off
-An absolutely amazing older interstate highway with 6 lanes and an amazing FRISCO grade-separated bridge that’s a standalone masterpiece.
-Another view of the interstate highway

Most of these astoundingly real scenes work BECAUSE the roads are so realistic. They don’t “waste” space because they’re interesting models in their own right. (Mike Budde Modeled most of these awesome scenes. For more of his work, look for back issues of “Mainline Modeler” a defunct model magazine from the 1990’s)

There should be no excuse why you can’t model adequately wide, detailed and attractive looking roads. The average US street is 30-35 feet across, roughly 12 feet per lane plus space to park on at least one side.

I hope these photos inspired you to go out there and start grading for your future roads.