If you have not seen the article  , you may like to read Steve Prevette's on Traffic Flow Considerations  October 2008 Dispatcher's Office That and the previous? edition on the NH Old Colony line are fascinating to me

Very interesting.

I see and understand what you are trying to do. I am sure you'll learn alot once yo install your aprons and car float. Not bing in HO I've come to the conclusion that I will have to create my own 3 track car floats in N-Scale. I've traded a few messages about the subject with Tim Warris of Fast Tracks and am strongly considering the purchase of a #6 turnout jig. I wouldn't have to do that if Walthers would release their carfloat in N scale but, so far, they have expressed no interst in doing so. So money is money is being saved for that jig and the supplies of code 55 track that will be needed to go along with it.

Since you been looking at the Flagg books, I am sure you noticed that there were a number of places that featured car float aprons alng the East River waterfront on the Brooklyn Queens side. Most have disappeared over the years since car float operations ended in the late 1960s and 1970s. One of those locations has been turned into a park that still preserves the aprons though the area itself has seen the removal of the tracks, or at least them being covered over by concrete. Its located in Long Island City and is accesable by public transit. I haven't been there but the information sits in a stack of reseach I did on my layout.

There are only two places in Brooklyn with functioning car float aprons: Bay Ridge and Bush Terminal. Only Bush Terminal has actual car float operations. The Bay Ridge car foat facility was newly built in the 1980s when it was thought that it would remain the center of car float operations on this side of the East River but that never came to be so it sits unused but from what I understand it has been maintained in operating condition.

What you are doing sounds more like something that would fit in Bush Terminal operations since it is home to many businesses that might be ideal for what youwant to do on your layout. It's worth a look, at least, in my opinion.

Irv

Rich, if you haven't thought of it already, maybe you should think about doing cardboard/paper mockups of buildings first (instead of real construction). That may help you hone the space a bit.

Irv-

Thanks for your note; I have your message from last night (I ended up staying up late getting this post done, for the record pasting from Word is NOT easy) so I'll get back to you later today but you make some great suggestions.  I'm only an hour from the locations you mention so it might be worth a trip one day.

Scarpia-

You make a good point and it's something I have been starting to do in a bit of a non-traditional fashion.  In my last picture with the carfloat I have a number of empty rolling stock boxes stacked up.  The idea there was to create the visual effect of a bulding flat against the bcakdrop behidn the tracks, but to your point it doesn't give the right feel as to what the buidlings will look like.  I think it might be time to break down soem of those boxes for the Pack 'N Play and build some mock ups!  Appreciate your comments, I follow what you do pretty closely and I've been more than impressed with your results.

Alan-

Are you referring to the October MR?  I quickly looked for it this morning but I coudln't find my copy in "the office" but I will take a look tonight.  I'm actaully reasonably happy with my layout capacity (in that respect I think I lucked out) and also with my track arrangements (I think I went through about 15-20 versions of my track planand I had A LOT of help from expereinced people on various forums) I jsut thought I would share the analysis tool that I put together; it's crude but I thought it worthwhile to share how I came up with the idea.

Thanks to you both.

~rb

If you're only an hour away from the locations I talked about you aren't far from me either. So we might ne abe to get together or visit to see our respective under construction layouts and share info. I see you actually have trackwork down, I don't yet but I'll be at that point for at least part of my layout. Right now I am putting plaster cloth down. It's slow going as I am both taking my time with it and being careful not to create ant flooding anywhere. I do a diagonal row a day primarily because that's how long it takes for a row to dry. It's messy as well but so far I have had no disasters,

I would apprciate it If you can send me your contact info. I'll sne you mine as well.

BTW, the Long Island Railroad only does commuter trave now. It's freight operations were taken over by the New York and Atlantic Railroad in 1999 and no has looked back since. I thnk New York may switch Bush Terminal these days as I do know they also handle freight traffic in Greenville Yard and along the rails in Brooklyn and Queens that I am modeling.

Irv

Rich -

Looks like you are well on your way, and being a NY Harbor model RR'er, I like what you are doing.

If you haven't already come across it, I'd like to suggest checking out two websites - My friend Dave Ramos, who is modeling the LVRR, Erie and NYC in Manhattan in 1947, with heavy carfloat and terminal switching action at www.nthrr.com, and my Yahoo group for my layout, the Lehigh Valley Harbor Terminal RY (listed below in my signature). Dave and I are both very into operations, and like to try to recreate the way the railroads "did their thing". Hopefully, we can help you and in the process, you can give us ideas by asking us questions about things we might not have ourselves considered.

I am sorry if I missed it, but what era are you shooting for? I was kind of sorry to read that you "abandoned" your Hoboken Shore concept (what  neat little RR), but Brooklyn is neat, too, and I once considered a ficticious Brooklyn Terminal RR before I decided to model the prototype.

Looking forward to talking to you more,

Ralph

Rich -

After going back over your post in detail, I thought I'd try to respond to some of your bullet point questions...

• Figuring out a way to power my frogs without having to pull up all of my turnouts. This was a real rookie mistake, but after pulling up and relaying some track I want to avoid doing that again like the plague. I’m especially worried about doing it with delicate switches as I’m sure I will push something out of gauge. Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Are you using commercial turnouts? I am (Peco and Atlas), and have had no issues with unpowered frogs. Unless you are using REALLY tiny (44-tonner) locos, I don't see a problem. As long as you have feeders every 2-3 feet, electrical continuity should not be a problem. I use mostly SW and S-type locos, and the ONLY problem I have is where my multiple Atlas diamond crossings are one after the other, but again, I wired the living daylights outta them to get them power to keep my switchers from stalling as they roll over two or three in a row.

• I need to start building structures. The placement of sidings for the scrap yard, power plant, can factory, and printing facility are subject to the final dimensions and positioning of the structures that they serve. In the coming weeks I’m going to start on a modest project to cut my teeth in model building: I’m going to build a large warehouse that will serve as a background building adjacent to the carfloat yard. I have a large number of Walthers Modular pieces that I ordered on sale a few months back so I am going to put them to work as I have them on hand.

Cardboard or other cheap materials work, too before you spend time, money and a nice kit on something you aren't happy with. I was lucky, I have a friend that is a professional model builder, and he took regular everyday corrugated cardboard and made two 2 foot covered piers that look fastastic for me, and are nice models in their own right. As for kits that are out there on the market, I too plan on using the Walther modular kits, and I also plan on using many of the popular Walthers kit from years past, but opened up to be bigger, and changed around ever so slightly, so as to keep people from saying "Oh, that is the Walthers Hardwood Furniture kit, isn't it?". I have narrow benchwork with long runs, so building flats are the order of the day for me. Taking to Champion Packing Works kits and combining them skillfully can make for a neat building.

• Strategize on how to start on scenery. My first inclination would be to scenic the carfloat yard as this is a fairly simple project: I need to weather and ballast the yard, place the warehouse structure mentioned above along with a building flat or two to create some depth of field. However, if anyone has any rules of thumb about what order to scenic a railaroad I would love to hear them.

Well, like you, I used insulation foam for my base, but I did not go and cover it with cork (no need to). Before I laid any track, I painted it a "dark dirt" brown, then put the track down. Now rememeber, you are modeling low-traffic yard trackage, so there is really no such thing as a nice sharp ballast shoulder like you might think of as you see on most layouts - It just isn't gonna happen here. The track is "crappy", and so is the roadbed. I laid mine down flat, and then to simulate cinders, I used black sanded tile grout. Once you wet it, it's stuck, because of what it is. just spread it out and you are good. No need to make nice neat lines. for the rest of the ground, I will use more paint to attach whatever dirt/grass product is handy to finish the surrounding "ground". In my friend Dave's situation though, he models the city pier side and streets, so he has to model Belgian Brick/Cobblestone, with track in the street. He went with printed paper attached to Masonite. See his website for detailed photos. Oh and as far as building flats to get forced perspective, I suggest picking up John Pryke's "Building City Scenery For Your Model Railroad" by Kalmbach".....It is the perfect resource for just this. 

Hope this helps some,

Ralph

Hi Ralf-

Thanks for taking the time to put together such a detailed reply. I’m familiar with Dave Ramos’ layout and website (as well as your work through Craig’s Housatonic page) and have used that extensively to research the type of operation that I am looking to do. While I’m not familiar with your layout (I’ve applied to join your yahoo group) I am modeling a later era than Dave in that I’ve set my layout semi-loosely in 1974 (basically pre-Conrail, but I’m not 100% strict on everything). I grew up in the area in the 70’s and 80’s and to me there is a great story to be told in the decaying urban environment of the time.

While I moved away from the Hoboken Shore and to the BET due to limited information on the prototype, the other reason I took up the BEDT was the motive power. I wanted sound, and shoehorning a sound decoder into a 44 Tonner didn’t seem possible with my current set of skills. Even with that said, I cannot claim that I am trying to model a prototype with what I’m doing. My primary motive power is a Broadway Limited Imports SW7 which never ran on the BEDT either, so I stray from my template where I need.

On the turnouts, I’m using all commercially available code 83 turnouts and track(all Atlas #4’s with 4 Peco #5’s for my runaround and 3-4 Shinohara Wyes) but I am having issues with stalling over the frogs, although almost exclusively on the Atlas turnouts. Like you, I have a ton of feeders (about every two feet) and with a few exceptions there is power on each side of every rail joiner (I need to wire up my yard ladders a little more to see if this doesn’t solve my issues).

I suspect the issue may be the height profile on the Atlas turnouts. As the locomotive goes over the frog, it looks like it is “lifted” at bit so I think solid contact with the rail is lost. Rather than trying to correct the profile issue, my thinking was powering the frog might be a more expedient process. But before I do this I purchased a CXM cleaner and I’m going to scrub my rails down so clean that surgery could be performed in there as I want to eliminate any chance this is an issue with dirt on my track (I think I still have spackle dust on the rails from when I constructed my backdrop).

I have the Pryke book already, it’s gotten me this far and I concur for anyone modeling what you and I are doing this should be required reading. It’s the best $20 you can spend when building an urban layout. I did want to ask you about your use of grout as ballast. I’ve been toying with that idea as I want to replicate this look for my carfloat yard, and I keep coming back to the idea that grout would really fit the bill.  Looking at various photos, my suspicion is that the tracks were laid on a thin ballast of cinders back when then railroads used steam and were never not maintained much afterwards.  Alternatively, I was looking at using this ballast with some sifted dirt mixed in, but I'll take a look at your results. 

Again, many thanks for taking time in replying!

~Rich

Rich, glad to have helped, and glad to make your aquaintance. I see I can't hide out there on the internet!

Don't worry about not modeling a prototype. By following the prototype and making a cedible model of the real thing is perfectly OK. It's when people start building a NY Harbor-based layout and put a model of an Agway feed mill in the middle of it that I begin to start calling the "Prototype Police"!

I also understand about the problems of shoving sound into a 44-tonner - I have no desire to torture myself trying, either! LOL! As for lack of info, I have to disagree, the info on the Hoboken Shore is certainly out there, but that is neither here nor there. Brooklyn is neat, and you can "do things" in that environment that would be out of place in a New Jersey-based environment. By keeping to prototypical "baselines" for operations and industries, you should have the makings of a great layout.

As far as track goes, yes, clean track is key, especially for what we are doing. Dave Ramos's track is all handlaid (well, most of it is), and thus clean track is key since it is less forgiving. Of course, Commercial track isn't always constructed to the fine tollerances that one can build into handlaid track, but other than that, it's all the same. The only problems I see forthcoming on mine are, as I said the multitude of crossings. We;ll have to see!

Ralph

This conversation parallels a comment/request I made on the feedback on Marty McGuirk's article, but I'd love to take a look at the resources for the HBS that are out there.  What I have available (basically this website) is pretty limited in terms of trying to figure out how to designed a model railroad.  Figuring out where to find sources is one of the hardest parts in following a prototype for me, so I'd love to know what other information you have available or even general strategies for smaller railraod like the HBS.

I was also in your yahoo group and coudln't find any images of the grout used as ballast.  I'm trying to emulate the ballast in the image in my previous post and I've been long suspicious that sanded grout would be a great candidate for ballast but before I tried it out myself I was hoping to take a gander at some photos of your work.

Many thanks.

~Rich