Burnham Yard Road Further Revisions

I've been working on the railroad, and while doing so was looking at how I was going to treat the transition of the track through the return loop staging. As a result I started looking at the maps of the area I have from Google and realising that I had made a mistake with the orientation of the street blocks. That is I had set them with the longest side facing the baseboard edge, whereas in fact they should have been orientated with the shortest length to the front of the layout.

I also realised that given the location of the layout, in a square between Franklin, Orleans, Oak and Chicago that I would not have a North to South road running on the layout. So I got the big ruler out and my tape measure and looked at what had to be done to rectify this mistake?

As can be seen from the above picture the result is that it has become easier for me to transition the tracks through the return loop staging. The road to the far left of this picture is only on the drawing for reference to the real location in Chicago, as it represents West Institute Place. 

On the layout we have West Chestnut Street, West Locust Street, and depending on the finding out the date the name was changed, West Whiting/Walton Street. To the right, off board, would be Oak Street, and to the left, off board, would be West Chicago Avenue. Franklin Street would run across the front of the layout if I had room, and North Orleans Street would be at the back of the baseboard.

With the upper level elevated track the plan now looks like this.

I'm thinking about using the Micro-Engineering street viaduct, but I have found another dealer who does laser cut Chicago elevated structures in peel and stick wood. I will have to find out more from people who know more than me.

   

Burnham Yard Surfacing

Spent Sunday afternoon surfacing the frames.

It's a good thing that I have a lot of hardback books to weight down the boards while the glue dries. Almost ran out of traction titles, almost but not quite, as there were four in reserve. :-)

Started marking in the center lines and laying out the angle of the yard lies on etc.

It's all starting to come together and the plan is to work on this in my spare time over the Xmas holiday period.

 More updates as and when there is progress to show.

CNS&M: Burnham Yard Revisions

I posted the original plan on the Model Railroader forums and got a nice bit of feedback from Paulus Jas and a plan that he drew up (that's what I call keen), which I'll show you now so that i can discuss it..

I think Paul made some really astute comments, and I was kicking myself for not spotting them. He is certainly right that the left hand track that sneaks off stage to the rear will be inaccessible when the elevated track is put in. The suggestion for having the rear siding as partially abandoned is certainly useful too.

Most telling for me was the re-alignment to remove the excessive switchbacks I had. A result of thinking about one problem and not thinking about the implications of the answer. In this case maintaining an adequate lead length.

 

Grey represents roads. Light brown buildings. Blue is for the backdrop, and the orange rectangle is an intrusion into the room.

 So here is my version of Paul's plan, which I'm pretty pleased with, as it looks right to me. It has a lead that can hold six 40 foot freight cars, the arrival/departure line can hold eleven 40 foot freight cars, so this means six mixed 40 and 50 foot freight cars, a caboose and two electric locomotives will fit quite comfortably between the clearance points.

The two team tracks to the right are now kept clear of any switching moves, and I've added a RIP track too. I estimate the layouts maximum capacity is 40 freight cars, so its working capacity will be about 20 freight cars, which allowing for three turns a day with six car trains means it should all work out about right.

Below is the upper elevated track layout.

I modified the junction for right hand running and added a double-crossover at the right hand end after measuring the storage cupboard that I intend to run the tracks into. Not large enough for a return loop, so I needed to add the double-crossover so that trains can run into either of the two staging tracks and come out running down the right line when coming back out.

The operations of the trolley part of the layout is basically a simple shuttle back and forth with the opportunity to change the order of the trains return to add a bit of variety.

 Finally, the above shows all the track for my layout, which is set at 56 inches, for eye level operation.
  
(Revised with additional plans on the 16.12.11)

CNS&M: Burnham Yard

So after much feedback from the CNS&M aficionados, and some reflection on my part, with help from Google Maps, I've revised the plan. Below is the current version of my lower yard layout plan.

Grey represents roads. Light brown buildings. Blue is for the backdrop, and the orange rectangle is an intrusion into the room.

It has been revised by removing the river, and changing the road structure to more closely represent Chicago city blocks in shape and size. This hypothetical yard would be near Franklin and West Chicago Avenue. However, since this idea is inspired by the Burnham Plan to remodel Chicago that was proposed in 1909, I'm leaning towards calling the layout Burnham Yard, but could be convinced otherwise.

The right hand side of the layout represent North, while the left side will be South, this means that viewing the layout we will be looking West. The plan remains to run trains in from the right hand side, around the hidden staging loop and into the front arrival/departure yard track. There is a run-a-round and I've added a caboose track, which is the short spur to the right hand side of the layout, near the front.

Cars can be cut from the inbound train and switched to all the spurs. The run-a-round allow the kick back spur to be handled too. in addition there is a team track for anything else to be unloaded on the right hand side of the layout.

The upper track layout has been simplified to capture the basics of what I want. The impression of elevated track that will see CNS&M cars running along it, and as and when maybe I will be able to get some CTA elevated cars too.

The two levels are not connected to each other, as I don't have the room to model the ramp. Trains can be run through the hidden return loop, or can be reversed once entering the staging area to represent a Northern bound train.

It is not totally ideal, but it is the best I can do in the space that I have. Unless someone can suggest any major improvements?

Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee

The layout setting is Chicago, circa 1950. It will represent a small downtown yard where all the former Insull owned traction lines met for exchanging cars.

So while North Shore will be the predominant line, I will have visiting freight turns from the South Shore, the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin and the Chicago Transit Authority. The latter being very apposite as the North Shore hired the CTAs Baldwins during the day to meet their needs, which was possible as the CTA only ran their freight trains at night.

I'm still pondering what to name this layout. Originally I was thinking of calling it Van Buren Street Yard, but after a bit of research that title would suggest the layout was in the heart of Chicago's downtown district, and it just didn't feel quite right as a location.

Therefore I did a bit more research into plausible names for this imaginary location. However, I found that the North Shore had a freight terminal at Montrose Avenue, just North of downtown Chicago, but this was a single track for their original ferry train piggy back service. So not a close match to the look and feel I wanted. This line connected to the elevated lines at a ramp at Wilson Street. So at the moment I'm thinking more along the lines of Wilson Street Lower Yard.

Here is my new layout plan.

The bright orange block is an intrusion into the room. The orange brown and dark grey shapes represent buildings. The light grey shapes represent roadways and bridges, with the blue being a river.

It is all quite tight, as the space is just shy of twelve feet in overall length. The operational plan is to have trains start on the upper right hand track, proceed into the return loop, and then be broken up in the yard at the front of the layout. I have a couple of team tracks on the right hand side of the layout, with five other spotting points on the left hand side. Three of these spotting points go through the backdrop to hidden industries and can therefore represent anything, and more importantly add car capacity to this otherwise cramped layout.

Once the lower level is built, and only if I think I want to go ahead and expand, will I then add the elevated section you see below. 

This plan just shows an elevated section of line, and the position of the return curve to the left, which will be hidden with a view block.

This will represent the elevated sections of the North Shore Line that use the Chicago Transit Authorities route to reach the famous downtown loop. Here I have shown a fake four track through station, loosely based on the Montrose and Wilson location, with the intention of using the dummy tracks as storage. Meanwhile trains will sneak into the upper return loop and back onto the layout on the supposed storage track at the front.

Looking at this plan I'm not thinking that perhaps I will flip the orientation of the station to be at the front of the layout, and the arrangement of the turnouts needs revisiting (Edit: I went away and revised the plan, and what you now see here is that revision, which simplifies the turnout arrangement. I also tried out bringing the station to the front of the layout, but it didn't look right to me).

Finally here is a picture of both levels of the plan showing how the two fit together. Perhaps a bit over ambitious. What do people think?

Anyway I love it when a plan comes together... (even if I did have to quickly revise the plans)
   

P&SR: Santa Rosa 44 Fourth St. Depot Addendum

 I found the scan of the 1928 layout of the P&SR depot at 44 Fourth St in downtown Santa Rosa. The scan came from a Street Railway Journal, but I'm afraid I've lost the reference at this time.

And here for quick comparison is my plan to make it fit the space I had.

 

I tidied up the rough and ready 180 degree picture I presented before, adding the backdrop elements that were missing. Overall, not a bad interpretation, though the trackwork will require some home built crossings and several of the turnouts have to overlapped to fit into the prototype arrangement.
  
Unfortunately, like the real thing, this project has been abandoned into the mists of time.

WLJR: Sands End (Part 2)

Light grey for roads, and or bridges, dark grey railway building, brown represents non-railway buildings. The orange square is the intrusion into the room, and the track is coloured green.

I drew a total of 18 versions of the track plan to arrive at the one you see above. Some of them were minor tweaks, others were complete revamps starting from scratch. The final one above is actually based on C. J. Freezer's Minories, and my first versions had station platforms at the right end, but these were removed as the plan evolved.

The reasons for their removal revolved around the limitations of the space and the practicalities of fitting in a crossover for running around the coaches when a train was brought into the station. There was also the thorny problem of how the prototype would handle the layout of the third rail at the crossover, because the train crew would need to get down on the rails to uncouple the train.

The solution, or evolution of the plan, turned Sands End from a terminus into a through station. No need for a crossover. To do this the tracks would run into a fiddleyard, but now I had to deal with not one but two fiddleyards and their storage. More I looked at this the more bothered I became by the solution, as it was very clear that the layout was becoming less and less self contained within the space that I have, and that operating it would require considerable effort to set it up.

Not a big issue for those who want to exhibit layouts, as this comes with the territory, but this layout was supposed to be a home layout. A wash and go model railway that would require a minimum amount of faff to start running stuff.



As my thoughts on the execution evolved I decided that Sands End had conceptually become something else, and in my mind I renamed it Worlds End. Above is a snap of the Templot templates showing the actual alignments of all the turnouts and tracks, which I started building.

P&SR: Santa Rosa 44 Fourth St. Depot

Pale yellow represents the baseboard, grey roads, building are in brown, the orange square is an intrusion into the room, the track is red/black, and blue lines represent the backdrop.

I drew up this plan the layout as strictly a home railway to please me.

If our world is like a stage, then the size of the stage sets certain limitations of  the scope of the production. Playing to the strengths and diverting attention from the weaknesses of any scheme will produce a more satisfying result. If you don't do this, I think you will find that the effort of making the layout will result in a less than enjoyable outcome.

Not living in America, I didn't want to fall into the trap of building a model of other people's models, thereby ending up making a pastiche of the real thing. So this layout was designed using prototype drawings of the track arrangements to arrive at the final track plan.  

Prototype Considerations

Choosing a time period to model that P&SR is critical to modelling the railroad, since the changing appearance of the overhead lines has an impact on the appearance of the right of way.

If passenger traffic is your forté then modelling around 1912 would maximize the opportunities to model this side of the operations as this was the era of the "Great White Cars". After 1918 the line was renamed and underwent some investment in new locomotives, and the overhead was upgraded from simple pole to catenary. Passenger service starts declining in the 1920s and the "Depression" affects revenue traffic in general. In 1932 the passenger service was stopped and track arrangements changed in light of the this service abandonment. The period between 1933 and 1941 is arguably the high period of electric freight operations, and has the advantage that there were no two identical locomotives on the line. From 1947 the P&SR became a diesel powered railroad using small General Electric diesels.

The site at Santa Rosa stretched over a length of approximately 1050 feet, or 12 foot 3 inches in HO scale. The length of the space available for my use is 11 foot 10 inches by approximately 2 foot, so a good match. However, the left-end of the layout would be compromised if built as above, because of the need to curve the tracks through 90 degrees to reach the fiddle yard/staging tracks.

I'm limited to a through point-to-point scheme, because of the space available. However, Santa Rosa is a small town depot, so this limitation is less problematical. Also, on the P&SR, operations and train lengths were very ad hoc in nature. From reading around the subject it seems to me that the track had to serve many functions, and as far as I can tell there was no formal yard on the system. Though I can see how track at Petaluma and Sebastopol could be used as such.

However, on reflection, if I were to build this layout now I'm pretty sure I would rotate the whole layout by 180°, like this.

  Again pale yellow represents the baseboard, grey roads, building are in brown, 

the orange square is an intrusion into the room, and the track is red.

The key to interesting operation is to give those viewing the model railway the feeling that there is a sense of purpose to the whole affair, and in my mind, any layout that doesn't have purposeful operation undermines the whole point of building it. Therefore this plan for a layout that has 6 industry points and an interchange, and since it replicates the prototype fairly closely it will at least have the same sort of problems the prototype had. I have some knowledge on the P&SR's operational pattern, which suggests that I shall be choosing the Gravenstein apple-growing season, since this more than doubles the number of trains that are run each day.

Conclusion

When I started out I had no idea what the tracks for the P&SR at Santa Rosa looked like. My first couple of plans were purely free-lanced speculations based on wishes to see a junction and my over-heated imaginations. Needless to say when I got some information about the area I started afresh.

Though I started building this layout, I ended up abandoning the project for reasons that quite frankly don't make a lot of sense to me now, though at the time they seemed reasonable. The baseboards were used as the basis for my P4 World's End: West London Joint Railway.

The reason for posting this is to serve as a reminder of why I liked the P&SR, and to publish some small part of the research I did on this project. As such expect more about my favourite West Coast traction line, especially as I have just ordered a new book that came out in 2009, which I missed the announcement of. A review will be written at some point.