ML&S

Nancy, sounds interesting, can you post any photos of your modeling efforts? From the name of the road I was expecting the Milwaukee Road's southern extension route. L&N, SOU and M&StL sound like an odd, but fun comination to mix.  M.

Fictitious is all in my mind

Hi fishnmack, 

Being all in my mind I can alter the geography at will. ML&S is a bridge route that has no rolling stock or locomotives. It may not fit the typical narrative but it does allow me to run trains that have meaning in my life. When I was riding bike trails in Minneapolis I could visit the location of the M&StL Cedar Lakes shops. In the 60's the whole area was a sea of yard tracks. Now it is mostly fields, bike trails, and two rail lines. In my mind's eye I can see what was once there. I will add post some development photos later to chronicle how I got here.

Nancy

First Foray into N Scale

After a more than 20 year hiatus I got back in model railroading in 2006. At the time I was working near DC on an out of town assignment and had discovered the C&O Canal NP. My favorite stretch of canal towpath was the 20 miles between the Monocacy River viaduct and Harper's Ferry, WV. The CSX Metropolitan Sub follows follows close by.

At Point of Rocks, MD the sub splits to either Baltimore or DC.

Brunswick, MD.

Harper's Ferry

All that railroading rekindled my interest in model trains so I stopped by a hobby shop in Franconia, and down the slippery slope I went. By March, 2006 I was off and running.

A two-track trestle. Prototype railroads never built two track trestles but I didn't have room for two separate trestles.

Early experiment with hardware signaling with LEDs mounted under the bench.

The how of hoyden

A long time ago, sometime in the mid '80s I was reading "Logging Railroad of the West" by Kramer Adams. Chapter 7 "Hogs, Goats and Iron Oxen" opened thusly,

"To the logging operator, no worldly possession was more important than his locomotive. It was basic to the entire logging-milling complex and received whatever maintenance attention he was inclined to dispense or could afford."

"Vital though the locomotive may have been, her busy smoke concealed some mysterious qualities that made her the object of many a love affair. No matter that she looked and sounded like a steel nightmare, was a bad steamer or had to take the grade backwards to prevent a dry boiler explosion. The logging lokey had a personality which made her the prima donna of the woods."

"From the beginning, railroad men had endowed their engines with the feminine gender, and the tradition was continued by loggers."

Describing a particularly elderly and "extremely second-hand" locomotive owned by H. H. Martin Lumber Co,, "While older than most, Martin's patched-up hussy probably typified the logging locomotive. She was a cranky and unsightly hoyden with a deafening voice. Her "bandstand" was usually cluttered with wire rope, lanterns, tools and hose. An ugly, out-sized smoke stack added nothing to her beauty, although it helped cut down on the number of forest fires she caused."

I looked up hoyden and in an instant found my moniker.

lagging scenery

I started ML&S physical construction sometime in the 2011-2012 timeframe. I had read that track should be laid before the scenery. I also knew there was no value creating scenery if the track was not near perfect in both mechanical and electrical aspects. I spent the first few years tracking down small alignment issues, dead spots, and balky switch machines. Over time I worked out most of the warts such that now my biggest source of failure is operator error like failing to line a switch or in a moment of inattention running a train beyond its track authority. It's a challenge to be the engineer running two or more trains, and the dispatcher. It takes some thought and coordination to schedule running meets that swap trains between Main 1 and Main 2.

So although there are still occasional stalls on frogs, picked switches, switch machine issues, and block occupancy fail to clear, for the most part things run smoothly. With the signal system also successfully getting over the proof of concept derail, I can ease into scenery and some capital improvements such as replacing the solenoid switch motors with Tortoises. 

Working Under the Layout

For those times when I am compelled to work under the layout I can upend my world in a direct manner.

 I remember how unpleasant I felt working on my back under the layout for an extended period of time even when I was laying on the exercise ball. I found the table legs for my layout while shopping at Ikea. Unfortunately they are no longer available but the concept could be applied to some portable layouts. 

Wipe the table clean of all rolling stock or artifacts that are not nailed down before upending.

Photos

Smart idea with the rotating table, thank you for sharing a few photos of your layout.  M.

My pleasure, fishnmack. I

My pleasure, fishnmack. I appreciate your feedback and comments. Sharing allows me the opportunity to learn from folks and see how well my ideas fare in a larger community. 

So what is the back history

So what is the back history for the ML&S? As soon as you the Minneapolis and St Louis the assumption came it would be going through Peoria rather than Chicago. Peoria and Eastern, for one, went to the Monon main line (at Indianapolis) which goes south to Louisville. Monon connected with the L&N there but had almost built their own network of lines in the coal districts of Kentucky and Tennessee. L&N ended up buying a chunk of the Monon to stop that invasion of their territory but it could have happened differently.

My mind came up with that in about five minutes, but then it's weird that way. So what's your back story? Completely a new road? One assembled by rewriting history? What is its route?

ML&S origins

The back history is I wanted a layout name that included my favorite railroads; Louisville & Nashville, Southern, and Minneapolis & St Louis. As I indicated in an earlier post I have felt their influence at different times in my life. I have a plethora of namesake locomotives, rolling stock, and books. The geography is more Appalachian than Illinois/Indiana ala Western Maryland.