Hello, all. New to this forum, though I've been enjoying the magazine very much for the past couple years. Got so wrapped up in the magazine, didn't even think to look around the website and at the forums! D'oh!
But lots of great stuff here! I was just wondering if I could get some ideas / feedback on the latest incarnation of my n-scale Portland & Pacific RR modular shelf layout design.
I had originally thought to build slim 6”x24” modules that could be configured into straight shelf, “L” shelf and then, with the addition of corner modules, an HCD sized island. The main consideration in that design was portability: I thought some moves overseas was in the future, and so wanted something that could fit any room as well as stack together paired up in convenient-sized boxes.
Well, no overseas moving in my future, just “normal, carefree” moving, so while portability and space considerations are still an issue, I don’t have to design the Russian-Doll-in-the-Chinese-Puzzlebox layout.
So, here’s my latest agony & ecstasy for your groans & grins.
Portland & Pacific RR
Fictional shortline along the Columbia River environs 1910-1940s
N scale, code 55 rail with #4.5 & #6 turnouts (handlaid)
NEC DCC
Two 1’x8’ modules butted together to create a 1’x16’ shelf with a 12” clamp-on extension.
Coincidentally, I currently have a 17’ blank wall in my garage. There's a slight angle on the modules, so the left comes out and extra 2 inches in the middle, while the right dips in 2 inches. In "real life" it'll probably be gracefully curved, if I can figure that out. ("real life", too!) There will also be a 10" backdrop and capped by a valence on a higher shelf. Layout hight about 56".
Operations (as I’ve been deliriously Imagineering it) would involve cars coming onto the layout via carfloat, get pulled off by the boatgoat and sorted by the yardgoat (probably one and the same 0-6-0, 0-8-0, NW2 or 44T, depending which decade I’m running), with the completed job placed on the A/D track.
The job engine (4-6-0, 2-8-0? Mike at the most?) would take a 5-6 car train out & back: the Dam Construction Camp needs supplies, lumber, equipment, empty gon dropoff, full gon pickup, etc. (there’s a car lift up 2” to the spur to the site), the cannery needs fuel, tin, preservatives and pick up of canned fish, and the brewery needs bottles, stuff for making suds, coal for the powerplant and pickup of the bottled bubbly and the occasional car of broken glass. The rare passenger car to transport workers would also join the mixed train once in awhile.
On the return (pulling the train tender first?), the steamer would drop the cars off on the A/D track and then go recharge in the engine service facility. Yardgoat would immediately push appropriate cars through the scale and into the float yard to await transport. When the float next comes in, the switcher pulls off the 8 float cars onto the A/D track, then loads the float with the waiting 8 cars, and off the float goes.
While the job is gone and the boatgoat changes shifts, the Industry switcher can service the local freight and import company, metal works, vegetable oil dealer, and deliver coal to the engine service area. I have groovy pictures of specific industries, bridges and scenes from the Columbia River area I’d like to model.
I still need to figure out the specific needs (in terms of carloads) of the industries, as well as the float schedule and other operational details.
In terms of layout design, here are some of the issues I’m grappling with:
--Do I have enough yard space to do what I want to do? I could remove the orange building and add one car length to each of the upper yard tracks, or I could remove the freight building and spur next to the float yard and add three car lengths to each (making the yard 8, 8, 6). Given that trains won’t be longer than 6 cars, do I need more yard? (or is that like saying “do I need more money?” or “do I need more pizza?)
--Do I need an escape from the float track down to the A/D track? It seems as though the boatgoat will just need to pull cars off and then push others on (always being on the “right” side of the cars). Would an escape allow the float track to be used as a second A/D track when the float is gone? Any benefit to changing the setup as is now?
--Any pitfalls / no-no’s I’m not seeing and that would be major (or minor) operational stumbling blocks? Or things that look good on paper but peoples with experience are having a wistful chuckle (or flashback twitches) about? I’m all ears!
--Instead of a 12” extension on the right, I could have a 2-track cassette (oh, to have 8-tracks back!) come out “towards” us along the left wall after a 10’ radius 90deg curve left. I have 7’ of wall above my workbench. That way the layout isn’t carfloat dependent. Hmmm..
Some of the layout might puzzle or seem a bit awkward (like the extra runaround in Rainier), but I’m trying to plan for the foggy future: I know I won’t be here in my present condo in a year or so, and with no guarantee that the next place will even have a garage, or a 17’ stretch of blank interior wall, I’m also planning for the shelf to fit in a smallish bedroom. Most smallish bedrooms around here are 10’x10’ to 11’x13’, so the addition of a 2’x2’ corner module would work out lovely:
And would make the transition from city to countryside a bit better. I wouldn’t build the corner module until I was in my new place and knew exactly how much space I had to deal with.
And, because my young kids (and I) also like roundy-rounds, the addition of two 2’x4’ end modules would make for a 4’x12’ island of continuous running. So I started playing around with ideas for that:
More space, more industries, so I played around with the idea of a detachable yard extension through car barn doors under some buildings. In this config, the layout would be in the middle of the garage / living room up on legs at 30" - 36" for chair ops for me and jump-up-and-down ops for my kids.
But that’s way, way in the future: I’m putting that here just to show that there are issues of portability and modularity involved.
Right now I’m focusing on the original straight shelf, so if anyone has any thoughts, criticisms, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free!
Thanks in advance for your time and feedback.
--M.C. Fujiwara
Moderator edit: resized images to fit page and converted them into clickable for popups of (much) larger images.
