The Saanich Peninsula

[ianc]

If you've been following my quest for knowledge on the 'Prototype' forum, you'll know what I'm doing. If not, here's a brief recap.

In 1890, Victoria was a very progressive city. First gas street light in Canada, first electric street light, first telephone exchange, first street cars west of Ontario. But no railroad, which was the real sign of progress. So the city fathers decided to build one, to run some 28 km to the small town of Sidney, at the north east end of the Saanich Peninsula, which is about 32 km long and 8 wide. The peninsula was a fertile farming area, and the farms were being created by cutting Douglas Fir trees, so there was a thriving timber and cordwood industry. A line was surveyed. Just before construction started, a different set of influential citizens decided that the route wasn't quite right (it missed several important farms and had a trestle across a corner of the lake that was the city's water supply) so they changed the line, producing a very steep grade with a couple of sharp curves on very wet land, at least in the winter. Because the locos burned wood, and one of the main freights was fuel, the line was called the Cordwood Limited by locals. It started operation in 1894, and was taken over by the Great Northern in 1902. The grades and poor roadbed made the line very unreliable, with frequent derailments in the wet season, especially as the roadbed deteriorated. But the peninsula was growing, and in 1913 the Electric Railway company decided to extend the city trolley system out to the north west corner of the peninsula, and created the Victoria Deep Bay Interurban line. It was a success, and ran until 1924. In the same year the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway started laying track to a ferry dock just south of Deep Bay on the west side of the peninsula. It started service in 1916, and ran until 1932 (freight only after about 1922.) So for just three years there were three lines on the peninsula, and that's the period of my layout. It's going to be done as cheaply as anyone ever did a layout, which might make interesting reading. Or not. If anyone is interested, and wants me to continue, I'll post periodic updates. If not, I'll just get on with it. Let me know.

Thanks for reading this far. Ian Cameron

 

[Bruette]

I'm with you Ian,

Sounds like this will be interesting.

 

[NScaler]

Even if you were building a layout with dirt I think the folks here still want to see it. So post away!

 

[ianc]

Today I picked up five doors, hollow core, 3' x 6', to serve as the base. I know that a flat base has disadvantages, but it has three important advantages. First, there really won't be much change in elevation on the three lines, so I don't have to worry about providing a lot of elevated roadbed, and what little there is is mostly provided by trestles, which I'll have to model anyway. Secondly, I'm not really sanguine about the location of this thing, and I'd like to able to move it (downstairs) if need be. Thirdly, it's hard to get dimensional lumber that won't move around with changes in heat and humidity, and in any case I'd have to let lumber acclimatize for at least a year, and I want to get going. Finally, the doors are light, stiff, and cheap. Free, in fact. Total cost, nothing. Over the past month I've been buying HO stuff listed on the local Buy & Sell. I've got 30 M of track and 25 turnouts; eight diesel locos including one virtually new one, all working after some TLC; 40 pieces of rolling stock, ten needing wheels, trucks, or couplers; six power packs; a dozen or so buildings; and one very nice little 2-4-0. Total cost: $140 and two bottles of wine, of which I have a lot, having been the wine maker for a company that went broke, leaving me with the wine. I'll start putting the doors together tomorrow.

 

[ianc]

Well, it's now four hours later, and I've spent part of it on the treadmill at the gym, thinking about the layout. The problem with a layout against a wall is getting to the far side. I could make it a metre wide rather than 1.5 M, but that wouldn't be close to proportional. I've got far too little space as it is - I really can't shrink it. So I have four choices. (1) I can leave space behind it, but even 30 cm (I'm pretty slim) would mean losing 8 sq M of floor space in the rest of the room, and I don't want to do that. (2) I could build the back first, and then the front, but I don't think my spatial visualization is good enough to make that work. I want to lay out the track in real space to make sure it works, then build the scenery around it. (3) I could build flaps into the design, to have places into which I could walk in order to work on the back. That's pretty complex in terms of joining the track at each flap - three lines X two joins X three flaps = 18 joins x two rails = 36 connections. Ugh. Or (4) I can make the layout movable - casters under the uprights. Then all I would have to do is move it out 30 or 40 cm while I work on the back. Given how rigid the doors are, I don't think I'd need more than eight casters, and I think I've got that many lying around, and if not, they're cheap. Comments? Please?

 

[CBCNSfan]

I'm along on this one too. I've done a lot of reading about early formation or rail roads in Atlantic Canada and how most that were still required thru the years were amalgamated into the Canadian National Railway which is now CN and no longer a national railroad. Very interesting about learning what went on in the West as the terrain is more difficult for building railroads.

Cheers
Willis

 

[ianc]

I'm along on this one too. I've done a lot of reading about early formation or rail roads in Atlantic Canada and how most that were still required thru the years were amalgamated into the Canadian National Railway which is now CN and no longer a national railroad. Very interesting about learning what went on in the West as the terrain is more difficult for building railroads.

Cheers
Willis

Generally it sure was (the Canadian Rockies must be the worst place in the world to railroad, not to mention the Fraser Canyon) but the Saanich peninsula was a dream. Looking back, I'm amazed that the builders of the V&S allowed themselves to be bullied into putting the tracks in the wrong place. Most of the line was fine, as were the other two lines, but that one stretch of the V&S killed them.

 

[GenSet]

Anything is possible in the abstract

Comments? Please?

Without a room diagram or a track plan, it's going to be hard to give you any useful advice. Once you start drawing things to scale (as has been mentioned) it is quite likely that less will fit than you expect -- that's just the way it always is. Switches in particular take up more room than one hopes. Since you have a bunch of track sections, go ahead and lay some out on the floor to see.

General concepts: Most people cannot reach more than 30" over finished layout. Aisles should be at least 24" wide (and wider is better).

If you expect to join a number of those doors together, add legs, and then roll the whole assembly around, you will probably quickly discover that it derails many pieces of rolling stock standing on the layout every time you try to move it. It's an inertia thing.

 

[ianc]

Without a room diagram or a track plan, it's going to be hard to give you any useful advice. Once you start drawing things to scale (as has been mentioned) it is quite likely that less will fit than you expect -- that's just the way it always is. Switches in particular take up more room than one hopes. Since you have a bunch of track sections, go ahead and lay some out on the floor to see.

General concepts: Most people cannot reach more than 30" over finished layout. Aisles should be at least 24" wide (and wider is better).

If you expect to join a number of those doors together, add legs, and then roll the whole assembly around, you will probably quickly discover that it derails many pieces of rolling stock standing on the layout every time you try to move it. It's an inertia thing.

You bet. I'd never think of moving it with stock on the tracks. My thought was to build the layout away from the wall, then move it into place, to be moved only if repairs are needed.

 

[ianc]

Life got in the way of construction, and will do so for the next couple of days: here's a photo of the space for the layout, and my test track for used rolling stock.

 

[Iron Horseman]

I can see one of the old grades on the satellite imagery. Is there any chance that Wallace Drive is on the grade of the former Canadian Northern Pacific? It looks railroadish.

I take that back. I can see two of the old grades just east of Keating.

 

[ianc]

(triple duh.)

I can see one of the old grades on the satellite imagery. Is there any chance that Wallace Drive is on the grade of the former Canadian Northern Pacific? It looks railroadish.

I take that back. I can see two of the old grades just east of Keating.

You have a good eye, but the wrong RR. The Interurban ran out what is now Interurban Road (duh) then along West Saanich, then along Wallace all the way to the end, then Aldous Terrace, across what became the Experimental Farm, along Mainwaring, across what is now the airport, along Tatlow, and ended in Deep Cove. The grades you're looking at are probably the V&S. Look for Veyaness Road. (Duh, again.) And out by the airport, look for Canora Road, which of course was CAnadian NOrthern Railroad. Lots of people have lived here all their lives and never associated those names with railroads.

 

[Iron Horseman]

(You have a good eye, but the wrong RR. The Interurban ran out what is now Interurban Road (duh) then along West Saanich, then along Wallace all the way to the end, then Aldous Terrace, across what became the Experimental Farm, along Mainwaring, across what is now the airport, along Tatlow, and ended in Deep Cove. The grades you're looking at are probably the V&S. Look for Veyaness Road. (Duh, again.) And out by the airport, look for Canora Road, which of course was CAnadian NOrthern Railroad. Lots of people have lived here all their lives and never associated those names with railroads.

Interesting. I didn't even think of looking at the road names until I needed a land mark to associate my question to.

Hehehe, I've followed ancient railroad grades from the satellite images from one end of the country to another. It is amazing that things gone for 100 years are still visible.

 

[ianc]

Well, third time lucky, I hope. Does anyone else find that this board freezes up from time to time and loses all your input? So I’m doing this in Word, and copying and pasting.
48 states and five provinces have counties. Louisiana has parishes, Alaska has boroughs, and B.C. has regional districts. As Victoria is the capital of B.C., the regional district around it is called the Capital Regional District. The CRD has a very nice atlas on its website, which you can see here. http://viewer.crdatlas.ca/public#/Home I called it up on my laptop, connected to a projector, and after a lot of fiddling with scale and projector distance, got it projected onto my doors. I then traced the main roads, the Interurban and CNPR rights-of-way, the waterfront and the lakes. It’s not perfect, as I had to move the image and the projector three times. But it’ll do. Here are two pix. The V&S isn’t shown, as most of the right-of-way was lost when it ceased operations. That’ll come. The dark part is the back of a door that had stickers all over the painted side.

 

[ianc]

Well. it's been a long time since I posted, but things got in the way. Where to start. First, if you have any notions about modeling a prototype much larger than a switch yard in HO, forgedaboudit. The logistics are terrible. Maybe N scale, certainly Z, but unless you've got a huge space, you can't do it in HO. For starts, there are two places in my layout where one line ran over another. In real life, that was a 20' cut. In HO, 2.5" = 18', but when you're trying to model it, it's way out of scale. Then, radii in HO are far larger than in real life. A siding that in real life took 300' takes twice that in HO scale. Same thing with turntables. It turns out that medelling changes in elevation isn't too bad, except where one line crosses over another. But I've got it to the point where the rough landscape is done (Styrofoam) and I'm ready to lay the roadbed and see if it works. Pictures in a day or so.

 

[ianc]

Herewith the pix of the (very) rough bones. Track is in place, but no roadbed. The view in the background is the Saanich Inlet, which is an interesting twist - the layout is backed by the actual background.

 

[Bruette]

Glad to see you have made so much progress.

Thanks for the update

That is a fantastic backdrop.

 

[otiscnj]

Ian,

You've made a lot of progress! Keep up the good work!! And don't forget to post more photos. I'm anxious to see more!

Otis

 

[Cjcrescent]

... First, if you have any notions about modeling a prototype much larger than a switch yard in HO, forgedaboudit. The logistics are terrible. Maybe N scale, certainly Z, but unless you've got a huge space, you can't do it in HO.

That's why we use selective compression when we're modeling or almost no one could have a railroad. For example, the small NS yard in my hometown is about a mile long. In HO I would need a little over 69' to model that yard alone. But by using selective compression, where I change things like the length and width of the yard, I could have a yard that you could look at and recognize as that yard, and do it all in less than 15'. If you have less room, a reasonable copy could still be done by leaving out some ancillary tracks, and making the ladder thinner, still capturing the feel of the prototype, and it can be done in about 10'. Trying to model a prototype foot by foot or mile by mile is impossible in the regular space available in most homes, no matter how short it is. Selective compression is also used in the structures we place on our layouts as well.

For starts, there are two places in my layout where one line ran over another. In real life, that was a 20' cut. In HO, 2.5" = 18', but when you're trying to model it, it's way out of scale.

You either made a mistake in construction of the cut, or in the math in building of the cut. 20' in HO is 2.75". That's 2 and 3/4". How is it way out of scale? Is it smaller than you wanted, or is it bigger than you wanted.

Then, radii in HO are far larger than in real life. A siding that in real life took 300' takes twice that in HO scale. Same thing with turntables. It turns out that medelling changes in elevation isn't too bad, except where one line crosses over another.

Actually, in HO scale, what we consider broad curves, 36" radius and larger, are considered very sharp speed restricted curves on the prototype. 36" radius comes out to about 260' radius on the prototype. A prototype 40' boxcar, pulled by a 44 ton switcher would have a hard time on this curve. Yet we almost brag about these curves on our layouts because, "We can run just about every model loco around these curves and they run so smooth, almost no overhang, and they do it at any speed". For curves that an Interurban or trolley would need, which can take tight radius curves, these are formed several ways, one of which is handlaid track, and the other is flex track, which can be curved as tight as 7-9".

Getting one track to cross over another isn't hard to do either. Here is how I do it. Its a simple matter of percentage of grade, which is determined by rise (height needed),versus run, (distance needed to rise to that height). Example a 1% grade would be a 1" rise in height for every 100" of run. So for a 1% grade with a 4" rise the run would be 400". That's 33.3' of track needed for that! In modeling we often don't have that amount of room for a nice prototypical grade so we have to use a steeper grade. Normally you try not to go above a 3.5% grade, but you can if running short trains of 4-5 cars. A 4% grade is a 4" rise in 100" run. That's only about 8.3' run needed. If you don't have even that amount of space, you could either steepen the grade, or eliminate it and have the tracks cross at grade using a crossing track.

I don't really understand the comment about turntables. Are you saying that if the prototype had a 90' turntable, because you say a 300' siding takes twice that in HO, and its the same with turntables, instead of a model of 90' turntable, you need one that is 180'?

 

[Iron Horseman]

I don't really understand the comment about turntables

One has to take the OPs comments in the context of what he is trying to do. He is taking HO scale track and applying it to a realistic map of the 20 mile long peninsula laid out on his 18' long space. All the normal calculations go out the window, as the track layout is being built to a different scale (about 1:6000).