New layout questions


jbovinette

jbovinette

Florida Railroads
I am in the design phase of building a HO scale shelf layout. This will be my first time building a layout of any kind. I am really wanting to do this myself but I am in a pickle and I hope you can help me or give me advise. I have decided to model an area of Florida. The area that I am planning on modeling is Fernandina Beach. Here is my delima there is a nice yard that I can model but the industries are quite scarce.

The yard would be at one end of the layout and move into a double track that runs through a historic district of town then fans out again to multiple industries.

One industry that I am planning on doing is a long building with a dock for transferring goods. The other industries that are there are huge. A paper mill (I think) and a container dock. I dont know what to do about these. They are just too big for a shelf layout. I kinda want to go off on my own and make other industries but in some ways it doesn't seem right to do. What do you think about this? I hope you can give me some incite on my little issue.


Here is a link to the area: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Fernandina+Beach,+FL&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.688845,81.474609&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Fernandina+Beach,+Nassau,+Florida&ll=30.672726,-81.458774&spn=0.026022,0.039783&t=h&z=15


Thanks for all your help,
John Bovinette
www.johnbovinette.com
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Only you know what is important to you.

You might consider making a list of your givens and druthers. The givens are unchangeable--shape of room, wife must have room for sewing table, etc. The druthers are changeable--road name, types of industries, prototype or freelance, roundhouse, #8 turnouts, turnouts in tunnels, table and isle width.

Chances are you will not get all your druthers. So you decide what is most important to you.
 
Try flats. Also, think small.

I'm not sure what kind of space you're using, but I presume you don't have a huge one. So right there you'll be somewhat limited, as you allude to.

But one way to get more industry and to do big buildings that's especially helpful with a shelf layout is to essentially do them as shallow flats against the wall. Your transfer warehouse can be just the loading dock and the wall that the dock is on, with the doors, all against your backdrop. You could do the same thing with the paper mill. There've been various articles over the years on doing flats in the model railroad press, and probably some of the scenery and structure books out there have some articles as well.

As for "think small" -- what I mean is, especially since this is your first layout, you're not going to get everything in you'd like. Cherry pick the features you want, and also, figure out ways to accomplish your ultimate goal with a smaller footprint. Here's an example from my own layout planning:

I really want to have logging, but I also really want to have mining. I love the look of log bogies, and also of small ore cars.

While it's possible that I'll be able to incorporate both a logging camp and a mine on my layout, I'm doubtful. So I'm leaning toward putting on one feature, but then figuring out how to still give a nod to the other feature. That might mean that my branch line goes to a logging camp, while I run ore trains that both originate and terminate off the line in my staging area, but still get to pass through my layout where I can see them. Or, I might make the branch a mine scene, and then put a small spur somewhere that serves a riverside, the idea being that the logging camp is off-stage somewhere and the logs get floated down river, and all I'm modeling is the small footprint of the pick up point.

On your comment about "going off on your own and making other industries" -- does this mean you would like to model an industry that's not actually in the location you're depicting?

If you're doing a freelance layout, then you have a broad "modeler's license" :) -- you can put anything there you want. If you're trying to faithfully model a prototype, well, then, you've got to work inside the lines you've drawn for yourself, I guess.

I understand the dilemma you're in though -- I've been wrestling with whether to put my layout in Southwestern Wisconsin (a big mining area, but not really any logging), where I can visit the real thing more often for inspiration and ideas...but what's keeping me from doing that is that even though it is freelance I want it to be true to history to some extent, and I really want some logging. So I'll probably stick w/ Northern Wisconsin in the end, where I can do both mining and logging.
 
This really looks like a great chunk o' railroad to model. I don't think you should worry about fitting the large industries onto a shelf model - they can be cropped, and both stacks of containers and paper mill equipment built along the backdrop, as well as the backdrop itself, can be used to paint the impression of industries much larger than the railroad areas your modeling.

As for other industries, it's totally up to you. I'd personally stay close to the prototype, as I think the models of all the non-rail served business (restaurants, hotel, etc) adjacent the tracks would be quite interesting. If you wanted a place to spot a few more cars, I can easily imagine one of the two tracks (the one next to the road) being used as a team track, with loads being transferred to trucks.

The paper mill is served by a pretty big variety of rolling stock - in looking at the aerial view, I see boxcars (pulp in, finished product out), coal hoppers (to fire the rotary kiln, and possibly power generation), and woodchip hoppers. There are also stacks of pulp wood, some of which may have been delivered by rail, and tank cars are needed to bring in kaolin slurry and other chemicals.

One last thought I had about this (and again, it's one of those things entirely up to you), is how I'd lay out the model with respect to the walls. I think the typical plan would place the waterfront at the immediate foreground, with a compressed nautical area, the tracks, and tall buildings as background flats. I'd reverse this so the landscape dropped down to the bay just in front of the backdrop, and the water and land beyond were the backdrop. Any large ships (like a container ship) you wanted to show could be large photo prints on the backdrop. Model Railroader did a project layout based on the Port of Los Angeles in their Dec. 1990 thru March 1991 issues like this, and it worked out very well. I think they have the series in a book, as well. It would have the added benefit that the track is already laid out like a large 'U', perfect for a shelf layout without having to make the corners bend opposite directions from the prototype to fit in a room.

- Chris
 
jbovinette said:
The other industries that are there are huge. A paper mill (I think) and a container dock. I dont know what to do about these. They are just too big for a shelf layout.
Click to expand...

You could always just have a physical siding or loading dock for industries that are so big and then have a image of the primary plant on a backdrop.
 
Thanks

Hey guys, thanks for all the ideas and suggestions. I'm still kind of torn on what to do. I have pretty mush the idea that im looking for, it's just this little area at the end of the layout.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Fernandina+Beach,+FL&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.688845,81.474609&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Fernandina+Beach,+Nassau,+Florida&t=h&ll=30.677395,-81.462035&spn=0.006505,0.009946&z=17

At the bottom of this map is the warehouse that I'm going to model for sure. The port is the other thing I would like to put at the end of the layout. I would love to do the seaport with the container ship, but what is the cost of doing a container port? I'm not that knowledgeable about container ports at all. Can someone give me some incite on this.

Thanks again for your help.
John Bovinette
 
Container ports tend to be huge, sprawling things - I'm thinking of Long Beach, etc here. A trick is having just one or two spurs in the foreground with stacks of containers behind them. I've seen containers stacked at least five tall in storage yards. Then put a container ship pic on your backdrop if you want.

Sometimes just the suggestion of an industry is enough. I'd like to model Gibson, Illinois one day - there's a huge soybean processing plant that's served by the Bloomer Line, CN (ex-IC) and an NS interchange (I think). But there's no way to fit it in a decent amount of space so I'd have to model a spur or two and use the suggestion trick.
 
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