Discussions with Retired Railroaders

Retired Railroaders are  one of the best resources to understand any line and how it operated.  There are several retired Southern men in the local area.  They share their knowledge willingly and worked on the B line during their careers. They maintain that in their time there was plenty of traffic on the line. This encompassed periodic times from 60's to the early 21st Century.  Traffic in the modern time ended short of Harrisonburg with interchange.  Prior to the merger there was interchange with the C&W, N&W, B&O and the Southern (Manassas).  To include these locations except Manassas as stub end tracks would generate traffic in modern times while they become freight points in earlier times.  The various grain storage customers and co-ops generated much of the modern traffic as they would have in an earlier era.

More to come.

Choices of Towns Part 1

Model Railroads are always about choices.  Selective compression is not a question of if but of how much and where we compress.  The first choice in compression is what to include and what to leave out.  The list should include 5 towns.  The first 3 are the easy ones for me.

Manassas
Strasburg
Harrisonburg

The next two are going to be more complicated.

Prototype Choices and Balance

The reality check that comes with layout planning is sometimes hard food to digest especially when you have a wide area of interest and dreams of empire.  Shoehorning O Scale into a 20 by 20 area is difficult at best and almost impossible at worst.  Previous posts were focused on City Point as a prototype but this proved to have issues due to the limited time frame and the lack of sidings for switching.  Numerous operating sessions have convinced me that it is a combination of running and switching will hold the interest.  In previous posts and on other forums the B-Line of the Southern or the Manassas Gap RR keeps coming up as one of my circles of interest. 

The strength of the B Line is that is its minimal changes from the 1850s to the 1990s.  My space will allow 4 to 5 switching points or towns with connecting track.  Interchange tracks allow movement of cars on and off the line.  In earlier periods when the connecting lines of the N&W, B&O and C&W were not there then the interchange tracks will become team tracks.  Buildings will be built on foam core bases and made removable to change eras.  The only real issue will be the track work.  More modern track work uses points and this may be a compromise I will just have to accept.  The other item that will probably be an anomaly for the ACW era is the connection to Harrisonburg.   This will allow the layout to function in full form through any era.

Next Post will deal with the towns or switching points that I want to focus upon.  If you have any suggestions please let me know.  

Rethinking Scales?

The last 2 years have seen a growth in my interest in operating as the driving force of my next layout.  Most of my regular operating has come from Keith Stillman's Easton & Potomac.  This layout packs an incredible amount operation in a tight space. The layout is freelance 1925 with mostly 2-8-0 and 4-6-0 locomotives and 36 ft freight cars.  The cars look good on his 24" radius.  It keeps a crew of 8 busy and the lunch beforehand is always delicious.

Several attempts to draw up a suitable track plan for a Civil War era layout have ended in doubts about the viability of the project.  The original goal was a City Point layout for the USMRR.  Bernie's original chapter in his Mid-Size layout book raised interest of this line as a 'doable' prototype.  The real challenge is that the trains are run as an out and back with no real spotting of cars on sidings.  All the switching is done in the City Point yard area.  I plan to give another attempt to come up with a plan and visualize the operations flow.  A more generic discussion of scale doubts follows

The doubts right now are the combination of two factors.

The first is the compressing of O scale in my space that gives enough operation to keep 2 to 4 operators busy.  My original view was that early O scale would afford more moderate 30 to36 inches in radius. My recent thinking is that this needs to be 40 to 45 inch radius  This changes the dynamic of the layout to a loop in my modest 13 by 20 space with another wall of 16 feet in length.  The challenge here is fitting in mainline operations.  Really I am down to a switching operation.  The question here is that enough operation.


The second item is the issue of motive power availability in O Scale.  There are few choices in this niche hobby.  The next loco in 2012 is the Yonah.   SMR makes a great product and I wish that I had bought several of them earlier.  My only one is a 3 rail Texas that is undergoing conversion to 2 rail.  The trouble is that any layout will require 8 to 10 locomotives to have a full roster.  The time and cost is gives one pause, but more so the availability of the locomotives.  Am I willing to switch to HO and use Bachmann 4-4-0.  Reliability of so small of a loco is one that makes me wonder. 


Enough musing for now

Weekend Ops Session

Had a great time Saturday operating on the second ops session on Jerry Ritter's Hudson and Ohio.  This HO layout is the second version of the H&O that I have had the pleasure of operating.  Jerry has really thought this design through and is now in the testing phase of the operational scheme.  It is a pleasure to say that I have operated at two ops session and one bull session.  Of course, we know that the real draw for these sessions is the lunch that Barb prepares so well.

Our host Jerry giving the group his orientation session for the new guys and an update on the changes from the last session.









The crew works through the cards as George is yardmaster, Doug is the Passenger yardmaster and Jerry is working Blackpole.  Jerry may be the only one who knows his way around Blackpole, but the rest of us are determined to catch up.

Side trip to On30 on the road to a layout

For a while I have been a member of the James River Division of the NMRA's On30 group.  One of the things that you are supposed to do is bring a module to the meets.  This task has become the butt of good kidding when I never seem to have one.  Finally, I decided that this needed to end so a new module is under construction.  The junction module consists of one mainline track splitting into two mainlines while going through a #2.5 wye which is equivalent to a #5 turnout. The turnout is a Walther's code 83 with modified ties.  This is an interim step until I obtain some low profile ties. The rest of the track is Micro Engineering On30 code 83 flex. The track work should be done tonight with the wiring going in on Friday night to be ready for Saturday's get together. 

 I may not connect it since it won't be fully tested by then, but feedback is important.   

Pictures will follow.