quakers1
The Blue Man
Hello all,
First off, this plan is nothing final.
After looking at pictures on various railroad photo sites, and some Google Earthing over the area, I have been taking the Rochelle-Aurora segment of BNSF's Aurora Sub into consideration. After doing a measurement in Google Earth, the route is 49 miles along the tracks. This route would be easier to compress, since between the towns, its just cropfields, cropfields, and more cropfields.
Here are some reasons I have looked into this route:
-This route is part of the Northern Transcon, so there is enough intermodal traffic to suit me any day
-There are some very, very interesting motive power combos that I have seen in pictures. On the St Paul-Chicago intermodals, I've seen pics of Executive SD70MACs, GP28Ms, and SD40-2s powering them! This just isn't your everyday BNSF.
-The route is not super long, like my originally planned route. Plans just may work out for this to fit in a 12x20 space with some compression.
-Even though I live a few hundred miles from the area of the Aurora Sub, I go to its area every year. So I have a good idea as to what it looks like in person.
That is all the prototype reasons why I like this route. Here are some ways it would be easy to model.
-At this time, there is a lot of BNSF, ATSF, and BN stuff on the market in both HO and N scale.
-Compression would not really take away popular spots since all the popular spots are in towns.
-As far as scenery goes, it is not a big scenic monster.
-It is not a trackwork monster either. The yard in Aurora is large, but I can make a compressed version of it.
So, would this 49-mile section of track take up a lot of space in N scale? I have a 12x20 room available for model railroad use. This layout would not be much of a problem at all to compress, since there is just cropfields between most of the towns.
This is my first planned prototype model railroad, but not my first model railroad in general. I have built 3 small freelances in both HO and N scale, and I decided that my available space would be better suited for N scale.
I am looking at several Kalmbach reference books right now. For track planning, I am not sure whether to use Realistic Model Railroad Design by Tony Koester, or Track Planning for Realistic Operation by John Armstrong. Which one do you guys recommend?
Thanks for any help, and thanks even more for taking the time to read this!
Best Regards,
-Skylar
First off, this plan is nothing final.
After looking at pictures on various railroad photo sites, and some Google Earthing over the area, I have been taking the Rochelle-Aurora segment of BNSF's Aurora Sub into consideration. After doing a measurement in Google Earth, the route is 49 miles along the tracks. This route would be easier to compress, since between the towns, its just cropfields, cropfields, and more cropfields.
Here are some reasons I have looked into this route:
-This route is part of the Northern Transcon, so there is enough intermodal traffic to suit me any day
-There are some very, very interesting motive power combos that I have seen in pictures. On the St Paul-Chicago intermodals, I've seen pics of Executive SD70MACs, GP28Ms, and SD40-2s powering them! This just isn't your everyday BNSF.
-The route is not super long, like my originally planned route. Plans just may work out for this to fit in a 12x20 space with some compression.
-Even though I live a few hundred miles from the area of the Aurora Sub, I go to its area every year. So I have a good idea as to what it looks like in person.
That is all the prototype reasons why I like this route. Here are some ways it would be easy to model.
-At this time, there is a lot of BNSF, ATSF, and BN stuff on the market in both HO and N scale.
-Compression would not really take away popular spots since all the popular spots are in towns.
-As far as scenery goes, it is not a big scenic monster.
-It is not a trackwork monster either. The yard in Aurora is large, but I can make a compressed version of it.
So, would this 49-mile section of track take up a lot of space in N scale? I have a 12x20 room available for model railroad use. This layout would not be much of a problem at all to compress, since there is just cropfields between most of the towns.
This is my first planned prototype model railroad, but not my first model railroad in general. I have built 3 small freelances in both HO and N scale, and I decided that my available space would be better suited for N scale.
I am looking at several Kalmbach reference books right now. For track planning, I am not sure whether to use Realistic Model Railroad Design by Tony Koester, or Track Planning for Realistic Operation by John Armstrong. Which one do you guys recommend?
Thanks for any help, and thanks even more for taking the time to read this!
Best Regards,
-Skylar
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