Maine Central - Birch Island Division (III)


R

Rigby

Member
The railroad has completed its negotiations for its right-of-way, and is ready to layout its tracks. I've got a good idea of what I want to accomplish but I could use your insight into how to actually bring it all together. Your help would be appreciated.

The layout will be built in a third-floor bedroom. The room is 10 x 14 feet, with the door on the 10 foot wall. There is a mirror image of this room to the east. My wife is extremely generous with me and will let me use that room as well, but it needs to be shared space. Her art use should predominate. I'd like to keep that room limited to staging, return loops, and possibly a helix.

This is a diagram of the space. There are windows but they are irrelevant. The staging shown in the east room does not represent the limit of what is available for use.

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The primary purpose of this layout is to provide realistic operating opportunities. I have scenery in mind but for rail-fanning beautiful scenery I will go to a friend's. I'd like to invite four or five folks over and entertain them for a couple of hours.

I'm working in N-scale. The locale is Maine. The time is not necessary fixed yet, but its sometime between 1974 and today. If its today, its an alternate reality in which the MEC survives or has been spun off from Guilford/Pan Am. There is also a lot more traffic than in reality today. I'm less concerned about prototype fidelity than I am with a realistic operating program.

Track will be Atlas code 55, mostly because it looks good and I'm comfortable working with it. Its also very easy to wire up. Turnouts will be manually thrown, the the exception of routes to and through staging. I haven't decided how to throw them - probably some will be fascia mounted controls and some will be ground throws.

Control will be DCC using MRC products, since that's what the club uses and it will allow people to bring their own throttles (those that have them, anyway).

Traffic control will be timetable and train order.

I am not afraid to consider multiple levels. I would like to build in stages so that I can run trains sooner than later.

While I recognize that I can't have everything, especially within my space limitations, here are the things I'd like to have if I could:

Railroad stuff:
1. Bridge traffic and interchange service.
2. Single track mainline with opposing traffic.
3. Yard with locomotive service. This needn't be a division point. This could be a branch line junction yard or even a major interchange yard.
4. Yard jobs.
5. Two heavy industries. One will be a paper mill (this is Maine, after all). Not sure what the other wants to be.
6. Helper service
7. A port (which could be in the room to the south of the east room - how's that for confusing? A track could run from the north wall staging, around to the east wall, and south through the south wall, to reach the port)
8. RDC or DMU passenger service
9. A tourist railroad (to justify buying some steam someday)

Model Railroad stuff:
1. Continuous running - both to provide entertainment to visitor and to provide interest and obstacles when railroading alone.
2. Active staging -
3. Use of LDE's to promote realistic operations. I have the MEC track diagrams for their whole system in 1973 as a baseline.
4. No bridging the door below nod-under height, which for me is about 68"

Anyone still reading?

At this point, I'm trying to decide how to design the layout in gross terms. I have lots of details drawn out already, like the papermill and or elements, but how to put the room to best use generally?

I'd appreciate any input you might have. Thanks for reading.

Justin
 
This is a drawing of the best use I've come up with so far for the space. Obviously this is much simplified:

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This is the first level. Someday when the second level gets built the major operational interest will be over the paper mill with access from the other side. There would be little industries along the branch line to keep the local freight interested. The "to staging" track would feed back to the staging room somehow.

The staging yard is active and has play value to whomever is working in there. There is no main line between that yard and the branchline junction yard, but I think that's a tolerable compromise. Both yards can see plenty of traffic come and go.
 
Justin, looks like it's going to be a heck of layout. You seem to have thought of most of the things that will make operations easy and interesting. I'm wondering if you've sat down and calculated the total cost? This would be an expensive layout for an entire club to build.
 
Hi Jim. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I wanted out a layout. The answer turned out to be pretty much everything.... which could be a problem. I'll sketch out what I see for the second level next and post that.

Cost is certainly and issue, which is part of why I've tried to design the layout so that the play value is intact from the first section onward. I plan to build the two yards first, with only a token staging yard for the branch line. But operationally, everything else on the railroad will be deemed to exist and the yards will be worth operating.

I can build on from there as time and funds allow. (I hope.)
 
Interesting setup... I'd like to see the plan for the second level, assuming I am correct in assuming that you are going double deck.
In any case, if you want the second level to connect back to staging, you could have it go through the space of the branch yard, turn the corner, and go down while it's heading through the space of the "active" staging (it would have to be in the back) and then end up at the same level and connect back to the "passive" staging yard without using excessive grades or helixes. Even though you have the space in there for a helix, I'm somewhat concerned about access. Plus, this way you'd get a bit more trackage in the deal.

Near the paper mill, you have an "outside view block". I would be correct in assuming that is a tunnel or something to the general effect of a tunnel?

I like the basic idea. Are you considering a passenger terminal in here somewhere?
 
Ok, here's the basic idea\for deck two. Please bear with me as I've been drawing these things at work (rather than working, which would be more gratifying if I weren't self-employed) and am limited to coins and bottle tops for curves of various radii.

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I didn't finish part of my thought on deck one - the branch doubles back, climbing in elevation as it does so, and enters the helix (or grade if I can avoid the helix) along the north wall, heading east. At some points the high track will be on a ridge at the very back of the shelf, or even hidden. At other points, the low track will be in a tunnel or cut with the shelf given over to the high track. I know that this is scenically "insincere." For the moment I think I'm ok with that. Still thinking about it.

So - deck two: this is further down the branch. The train has been rolling along for however long, and exits the helix headed clockwise, goes through an S (with an appropriate straight) and re-enters the primary room going railroad East (North [Up]). There branch again winds its way around the room and back. The second major industry is worked on the peninsula, this time from the outside.

When the train gets back over the junction yard there is a major interchange with another road. Staging for that interchange goes through the wall. Helpers (if any) cut off here and head down hill.

Then the line goes through the wall then to a reversing loop over the helix. There is some form of staging there for trains that have disappeared to the north.

The limiting factor for the lowest height of the railroad is a radiator on the west wall (no longer in use). That puts the low deck at about 40"
 
DaWolf - Thanks for the input. By outside viewblock I'm talking about what I've seen called a "Belladina Drop" in some press. The idea is that there is a backdrop inside the curve as normal, and a backdrop outside the curve. The inside of the outside curve is scenic as though it were the inside backdrop. The effect is that the train disappears out of sight and reappears on the other side - like a tunnel, but scenically different. It breaks up view and make it look like the train went further than it did.

Here's a better explanation: http://www.housatonicrr.com/blobs.html
 
As far as the helix goes, I am not wedded to it if I can figure out how to pick up enough elevation otherwise. If the bottom level is at 40" and I want to pickup elevation on the second deck but still have operating feature on it, then I figure I want something like 18" railhead to railhead from the lowest point on deck one to the lowest point on deck two - is that enough?

Call the active staging yard/junction yard level 0. There is mainline run of roughly 72 feet or 864 inches by the time the train gets to the point it will run through the east wall. If the average grade over that distance were 2% then I'd have gained 17 inches.

What's a reasonable grade on the staging side of the wall? The grade can be straight as an arrow so maybe 3%? The wall is 14 feet long but we'd only get about 10 feet of it for the grade, so 120" that would only be about four inches of rise. Which is actually enough I suppose. I'd have to stick the train in a tunnel or something for the last portion of the first deck run or it will be running right up to the underside of the second deck.

Thoughts?
 
This is the beginning of the design for the junction yard. Its based, sort of, on the Brunswick, Maine yard. The hard opposing right angle turns to the left (North) are actually prototypical - but they're necessary to the design anyway.

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The tracks extending to northwest from the middle of the yard are engine service and need modification. The A/D tracks will extend west to make leads. I'm not happy with the asthetic of the class tracks - I need to work on them. The lowest track is a passing siding for meets but is not intended to be worked from the yard except in exceptional circumstances.

This yard will originate and terminate way freights and mill turns for the branch and will interchange traffic between mainline and branch trains.

What do you think, so far?
 
Plan looks like a good start. You do need some crossovers in the stub end yard or your switcher will get stuck behind cuts of cars.
 
Jim, I probably should have waited to finish the yard to post it but I was mostly thinking about the A/D options. The plan was to extend the topmost of the a/d tracks to the left and use that as the lead. That way the switcher need never be to the right of the cars being pushed into or pulled out of the stub track. Does that make any sense?
 
No, it doesn't. The Arrival/Departure track is an end product track, where trains are either made up or broken down. No matter how far you extend that track, what happens when the dispatcher says he needs a hopper on thrid track in that's in the middle of a cut of cars? That car has to get to the A/D track but you don't want to pull out every car to get to one, assuming your lead had that kind of room. By putting a crossover track betwen each second or third track, you give your switcher a way to pull a few cars out of the way, pick out the one he wants, and then use the crossovers to get back to the A/D track. One of the hallmarks of a model railroader that doesn't unerstand railraoding is having a yard that is completely full of cars. Real railroads always leave a few car lengths empty be each switch over so the switcher can do its job with the minimum of moves.
 
UP2CSX said:
No, it doesn't. The Arrival/Departure track is an end product track, where trains are either made up or broken down. No matter how far you extend that track, what happens when the dispatcher says he needs a hopper on thrid track in that's in the middle of a cut of cars? That car has to get to the A/D track but you don't want to pull out every car to get to one, assuming your lead had that kind of room. By putting a crossover track betwen each second or third track, you give your switcher a way to pull a few cars out of the way, pick out the one he wants, and then use the crossovers to get back to the A/D track. One of the hallmarks of a model railroader that doesn't unerstand railraoding is having a yard that is completely full of cars. Real railroads always leave a few car lengths empty be each switch over so the switcher can do its job with the minimum of moves.
Click to expand...

Fair point. Though it's not always possible to make every scene perfectly realistic, one should if possible.
 
Especially for stub end yards. Mine is stub end with only one crossover and no runaround track. I have a devil of a time getting to the fifith car in on a track without pulling out the whole cut of cars and no runaround track means you have no way to get the switcher headed in the right direction. Believe me, plan for sufficient crossovers and at least one runaround track or you'll soon learn to hate that yard. :mad:
 
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