I love your leading lines effect. It sure works on me. Even in just a picture the road pulls me into the scene. I can only imagine how well it works in person. May I join the throw back club? I too like deep scenes and am designing the LK&O accordingly even though most everything I read says build'em high and narrow. Thanks to your post I will now look at the current plan from a "leading lines" perspective. Cool effect. Thanks!

Nice modeling, but it doesn't remind me of the San Franciso Bay Area, having been a resident there for 62 years.  Do you have other scenes that could remind one of the area?

It's hard to find much around San Francisco, railroad wise that is that modelgenic, the Oakland Mole, the terminus of the original Overland route is kinda ugly.  And the railroad goes on and on running through the marsh lands before crossing the rather formidable bridge to Benicia.   The Walther's Union Station resembles the Oakland 16th street station and the Walthers Municipal Pier kits reminded me a lot of the pier buildings alot the SF wharf.  I have both of these structures on my layout as works in progress.  There is also a stretch that kinda resembles the stretch along the Bay in Pinole where the SP(now UP) and the ATSF (now BNSF) run parallel each other at slightly different elevations. However I do not make an attempt to model actual places - perhaps I just don't have the discipline.

It does work for me though when a non-railroad friend who I haven't seen for a couple of years looks at my layout and says "Aha! the west".  And when an older friend who's a native Californian (which I'm not) sees the string of PFE reefers and launches into a tale of the time he rode a reefer train to Chicago in the 50's. Well, at least that's something.

Yes indeed, membership is always open in the "Throw Back Club". BTW, I can take no credit of the concept of leading lines.  I first read about in the first edition of Dave Frary's scenery book

The trestles in Vallejo/Martinez

The Niles Canyon

The Santa Fe lines alongside Suisan Bay (did I spell that correctly?)

Altamont Pass (if that's still considered Bay Area)

In older times, the SPC tracks from Campbell south to Los Gatos and over the Santa Cruz mountains, and the NPC tracks from Sausilito north to Sevastopol

Dumbarton Point and the dumbarton bridge

If memory serves me correctly wasn't there a RR bridge next to the San Mateo briged up to the mid 60's?

The San Ramone branch of the SP

The SP heading south through Gilroy and then dog legging back through the hills to Watsonville and north to Santa Cruz.

The Salinis Valley RR (SP) out to Monterrey

The Davenport branch from Santa Cruz north to the cement plant in Davenport

The San Francisco belt railway (mostly industrial street trackage with the SF bay for a backdrop)

Wasn't one deck of the Oakland Bay Bridge originally dedicated to railroads?

iirc wasn't there an Orinda/Moraga branchline?  I recally my dad having a 1949 geodetic survey map that showed tracks running over the Oakhill hills somewhere near pinehurst road.  But then, the map is gone and so is my memory probably...

The salt marshes around what used to be called "Drawbridge" on the SP line from Alameda to Santa Clara (ex SPC right of way)

What did South San Francisco look like in the '30s/'40s?

Regards,

Charlie

Actually Bindle stiff, the plate girder, through truss, plate girder, reminds me a bit of some of the brdige work in the Altamont pass area, except you've 4 tracks through the scene where there are only 2, and there was no industry between Livermore and the San Joquin valley (and next to no buildings). Now this area is infested with windmills.

Charlie

Thanks for your input Charlie. And of course, if a guy wants to, he can find all sorts of possible modelling senerios. Seriously though, I'd like to see how large a model railroad (in any scale) would have to be to include the six miles of the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge as a posible modelling subject. How obsessive would one have to be to undertake and complete such a project?  Likewise with the endless  low wooden trestles that ran through the salt marshes by the Dumbarton Bridge and along the old SPC (narrow gauge) through Drawbridge.

I used to live about three blocks from the San Ramon branch of the SP as it passed through Walnut Creek.  It was abandoned by the 70's and some of it is now a bike/ jogging path. The rest is buried under suburban sprawl. Still a couple through trusses that are dead ringers for the Central Valley kit.  Anyway, It never was much of a railroad hot spot, one or two trains a day.

Likewise the endless number of minor and very shortlived rail operations like the one that did indeed run through Pinehurst Canyon.  Another branch of it is under the San Pablo Reservoir. 

None of this material  would distill into a plausible entity like Joe Fugate's Siskiyou Branch. HoweverI think could envision a pretty nice pike in the style of Joe's based on the Camas Prairie.  But then it is not my intention to do so.  What I am really trying to do is model and reinterpret  my own history as a model railroader. Hopefully in the process, I manage to create something that gives some enjoyment to other people.

Aloha, Aran

When you write  "reminds me a bit" that is all I am looking for. The scene in the first picture would have been more effective without to two higher tracks.   These are a branchline that I added as a second thought to employ some mining and logging equipment  I have that is looking to earn it's keep.

Remember his first post states...

Rather than attempting to faithfully follow a segment of the prototype world, my layout is my imaginary impression  of many weekend trips

I very much relate to Bindlestiff's approach. Prototype modeling is absolutely cool and one has to have great respect for those who go to great lengths in doing so however I for one am more interested in a railroad that is connected to my memories. Rekindling those memories is the primary reason for my railroad. So if on the LK&O or Bindlestiff "Bay Area" a bridge is misplaced or a building is out of place it is not an accident. It is deliberate because it triggers a pleasant memory. More power to you Bindlestiff. Put a dozen tracks across that plate bridge if it makes you smile and warms your heart! 

How about the SP / WP lines from the Union City wye, up through Niles Canyon, Sunol, Pleasanton, and Livermore?

Seth Neumann is modeling this line in HO in a much smaller space than Joe's. If there's not enough industry there for you extend it south or north a bit on the bay end to the auto industry in Milpitas. If you like wind mills model up into Altamont a bit.

The Niles canyon certainly is scenic enough.

Or model present day Niles with the tourist RR on the old SP tracks and the UP on the old WP tracks.

And you could model the San Ramon branch from the south end (but this would need to be an old times operation).

Charlie