I've enjoyed reading all your responses. Here's mine, but be warned it may be more than you want to read.
I’m currently 63 years old. After American Flyer S gauge layouts and collecting, and a small 4x8 HO layout, about 1993 I started another HO layout and I still have it; it’s been lightly modified about 3 or 4 times since then. Here was and still is my approach to it.
In considering a new and larger HO railroad layout I set the following parameters:
A. I wanted long, slow freight trains in continuous loops. This relaxes me and lets me enjoy seeing railroad history roll by in all of the “fallen flag” railroad names on the railcars. I also wanted just a little switching.
B. The target location of the layout would be near a small town “back East” on the B&O/C&O (I was fascinated as a boy by calendar pictures of these railroads) where two or three mainlines meet in the mountains – with a little industry, alternate routes, one or two branch lines, and an unused passenger depot (no Amtrak.)
C. The time period is the early to mid 1970s. I chose this because I could run cars built in the 1930s (railcars have a 40-year life span unless they are almost wholly rebuilt) and could logically run many types of diesels, especially SD40-2 locomotives (my favorites; I rode them often when I was braking out of Bismarck MO on the Missouri Pacific RR in the late 1970s. They were reasonably powerful, very reliable, and were very smooth to ride in.)
D. In consideration of “A” ("...long, slow freight trains...") there would be no grades; all the track would be flat
E. The layout had to be fairly easy to move (I’ve moved it twice so far – it takes two hours to cut/disassemble, and eight hours to reassemble all)
F. The “scenery” on the layout had to highlight and help focus on the 3 dimensional trains (hence the backdrop is all scenery flats – 2 dimensional; much easier to move too)
G. Forty percent of the railroad is covered (I guess you could call it true “dark territory”) so there are about 6 tunnels of varying widths (3, 2 and single track)
BRIEF RAILROAD HISTORY OF ARCADIA* WV – “LOCATION” OF DOUG’S 1970’S ERA HO MODEL RAILROAD - a mix of historical fact and fiction
* Why use “Arcadia” as the town name? I was born and raised in Arcadia MO, which is on the MOPAC (now UP) mainline from St. Louis MO to Little Rock AR.
FICTIONAL HISTORY
Located in a valley that is the only flat spot in West Virginia, Arcadia is a small town where three large and two short line railroads converge, interchange cars, and pass through. There are two principal and one alternate routes of two of the three mainlines here. One of the railroads keeps a switch engine at the small yard, and it switches what is left of the town’s “industries” and periodically interchanges to/from the three mainline and the two shortline railroads.
In the 1970s the US railroads’ financial health was badly deteriorated (this was before the Staggers Act of 1981 that greatly deregulated the rail industry.) One of the means the railroads used in trying to “stay financially afloat” was railroad mergers, purchasing equipment from railroads that went bankrupt, and providing trackage rights (where railroad “A” operates on railroad “B’s” tracks.) Hence diesel locomotive consists often contained up to four or five different railroads’ engines, and unusual engines and freight combinations could be seen here. (So I’ve got an “excuse” to purchase various diesel engine models with various road names!)
In short, Arcadia WV was a very busy railroad location, and in the 1970s it became a railfan “mecca” – where men who like trains/railroads came to view and photograph a lot of varied train action. [Where I sit to run the trains is the optimum spot for train watching – the inside corner of the L-shaped layout.]
INDUSTRIES
The remaining industry is first of all the team track where usually miscellaneous freight (i.e. in boxcars, coal x gondolas, loading logs on flatcars, etc.) is loaded or unloaded. It is located at the right end of the station.
There is a small warehouse for loading/unloading boxcars.
There is a spot for unloading two tank cars simultaneously (diesel fuel for the engines; the fueling location itself with hoses is at the near side of the yard tracks) and a two-car-spot small processing plant for sand, which is then trucked to various glass manufacturers (WV is known as a glass-making state.)
Three extinct industries can be seen –an old decrepit shed for loading hogs, the coal tipple (not used for 20 years –same as the water tank - but neither torn down because of cost), and an old forge – a mom-and-pop affair for 40 years, bought out by a big company and then closed after 3 years.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE TRACKS and their flexible MINOR functions:
Yard Track 1 (the track closest and adjacent to Track 3’s Main track) - is the team track, and this is done at the track’s left end – close to the depot. The use of the rest of the track is flexible: fueling locomotives; parking maintenance of way equipment; setting out bad order cars; a track for temporary yard switching operations; other miscellaneous.
Yard Tracks 2 and 3 – are used mainly for switching the industries, building and breaking up small strings of cars for interchange operations with the mainline trains, and for run-around operations for serving the small warehouse (boxcar loading/unloading.)
Track 2’s Alternate route functions as part of the yard, and is used as such when switching operations are going on. Track 2’s train is then run on its normal Main 2 track or stopped. Also, because of Main 2’s train direction, at times the section of Track 2’s Alternate route track just to the left of the depot is used to interchange cars with the switch engine. The switch engine then needs to add a caboose that is kept in the yard because it runs on Track 2’s Alternate mainline route (union rules.)
Gauntlet Track with Track 1 – I installed that section of track (about 10’) because of its relative uniqueness, and for an interurban car that would run out of the far right tunnel to the station and return. Never did do this, and don’t plan on using it. I’ve kept the track because (a) I took the time and work to install it, (b) I think it looks neat, and (c) it functions as guard rails on that curve and through the curve-on-curve track switch – both are sitting atop “The Abyss” (aka the stairwell.) In 17 years I haven’t had a car or loco take the dive, yet. (I’m thinking of adding plexiglass there. I think I’ve been an Alfred E. Newman too long, “What? Me worry?)
THE OWNER’S TYPICAL USE OF THE RAILROAD
I like to run the trains to relax, so usually the three mainline trains are all run slowly on their longest length loops. If I’m “ambitious” I run Shortline 1 also (currently a 28-car ore train pulled by a Mantua N&W 2-6-6-2. Do you know that with a couple of small tweaks that loco is running around my 11" radius curves?) If I’m “feeling frisky” I also operate the Switch engine – which means changing Track 2’s normal long-train route by taking out some cars to shorten it (or stopping it). (Five trains are then running - as you probably know all railroads count a switch engine as a “train.”)
If I “just have to see” Shortline 2 run I have to do a lot of finessing.
Now that I’m retired I run the trains (and tweak them and the layout) a lot more often. I’m also adding, for the first time, a few steam locomotives (mostly Bachmann’s 2-8-4s with added weight and 4-8-2s) that at times help pull the diesel freights. Steam locos do this prototypically when moving “light” from their home shop to another location to pull an excursion train and as advertising for the railroad (great prototype “modeling excuses” to stick one or two on the front of a diesel freight, or double-head the steamers by themselves.)
If you got this far you probably deserve a medal.
DougC