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Need suggestions, expanded Mount Galena Mines Dream and design
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Active Member 73 posts The Glorious Tachikoma Active Member 73 posts
The Glorious Tachikoma

Greetings

Having recently been bit by the bug after several years, I found SCARM an began tinkering with it. I had also discovered an old copy of Iain Rice's 'Small Smart and Practical'. Therein was the gem of an idea, a 4x8 ripped lengthwise, but with curves in it to allow a turnaround. Just one problem.

18" radius curves.

And while that would be fine for 40' boxcars and little wood-sided ore hoppers, I'm interested in the modern stuff. 50 and 60' cars, maybe even a couple centerbeam flats. 18"R curves are a no-no for that stuff.

And then I had an idea. If the Mount Galena Mines applied to a 4x8...why not rip a 5x9 in a similar shape? So I played around in SCARM with the idea and it did work. Minimum 22"R curves and another 6" of space here and there. This is what I have so far. But for some reason it just doesn't feel quite right. Certainly it's better than before, where the Quarry was at the end and there were a couple industries on their way up-grade. But I'm not sure and would like some input on the design.

And so I present the New River & Groundson Railroad. A small short line serving the fictional city of New River, VA. It takes cuts from the CSX and starts out at the south end of New River, climbs around a mountain past an active quarry, and after the summit ends in the industrial park on the north side of New River. It's drawn in sectional track but that's more just to keep geometry consistent and major bits located.plus the grades are harder to work with in flex track. Size is 11.5'x9'

http://sadpanda.us/images/1108508-6MK98H6.jpg

Thanks for the time.

 
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Michael Tondee MRH Author 5,540 posts
Michael Tondee

Wish I could help...

But I'm just not much of a track planning guy. The only obvious suggestion I can make is that it seems you would want some kind of staging or at least an interchange to feed cars on and off the layout.  I always liked the original plan myself but I can't picture it using modern day equipment. Doesn't mean it can't be done, just hard for me to envision.

Michael

Oops.... A second look shows you do have an interchange identified. Oh, well maybe my post will give this a good bump and some of the track planning guys will chime in!

Michael, A.R.S. W4HIJ

 Model Rail, electronics experimenter and "mad scientist" for over 50 years.

Member of  "The Amigos" and staunch disciple of the "Wizard of Monterey"

My Pike: The Blackwater Island Logging&Mining Co.
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The Glorious Tachikoma Active Member 73 posts
The Glorious Tachikoma

Well...

In lieu of any further input, I'll just turn this into a SCARM-ideas thread.

Though Noah, it is conceivable that the MGM as Rice drew it could work for modern equipment. It would just be a small class-III serving two or three niche industries, selectively compressed to 'fit'. But as the 5x9 version only needs another foot by foot and a half to work, there seems little point unless the original 8x10 is all that can be fit.

Anyway, I had another idea. I was thumbing through 101 track plans for ideas and came across the #10 Pittsburgh Midvale and Ironton. A tiny 3.5x6 with a small yard and a curve-around into a small industrial park. So I thought, why not upsize it to 4x8? 22"R minimum except at the curved turnout (20"R inside), #6 turnouts in the yard, and some interesting scenery ideas. I'm imagining the loop on a causeway around a small harbor, with a table bridge at the indicated location. The two left most tracks serve some form of cargo transfer (perhaps to an island or to they keys), where the right-most would serve a plastics plant and maybe a bakery or some other mfg plant that can divide the yard from the park. Two runarounds mean one operator can work the yard, while the other switches the park and docks. I made this with the idea of sticking a Woodland Scenics corner module on the end and using it to connect to a 2x8 timesaveresque I have from several years ago. That way, there is actual reason to need a yard in the first place. Staging would be cassettes a'la Iain Rice. There are multiple turnouts which will need to be trimmed on both points and straight side.

As for scenery and location, I like to see this with a combination of Model Railroader's Kitty Hawk Central and the NMRA's 'Gateway Central XII'. General motiff is a shortline serving 2-3 industrial parks.

http://sadpanda.us/images/1112460-1VMD5B2.jpg
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The Glorious Tachikoma Active Member 73 posts
The Glorious Tachikoma

Redesigned the MGM from a 4x8

So...I went back to the drawing board, inspired by Noah's challenge. My aim was to balance track with scenery while still trying to keep it interesting. It still has a similar layout and theme to the 5x9 version in my OP. The theme is a small shortline serving both sides of a low-appalachian community. I'm envisioning the first 'town' with the passing siding actually set into a street behind a plastics manufacturer (covered hoppers and boxcars) and a lumber yard nearby. Climbing up-grade there are no sidings or industries until after the summit. At the end of the line there is an aggregate quarry (owned by a cement plant off-layout, hoppers are modified old coal units, painted to match quarry). The other track built over the interchange tracks' tunnel is a team track handling whatever the local lessees need. (fixed cement dock and tank car stands, movable conveyor for the odd twin-bay full of cement).

http://sadpanda.us/images/1114638-R1V2TLC.jpg

About the only thing it's still lacking is a place to stick the locomotives at the end of a shift. :/
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Prof_Klyzlr Moderator 7,956 posts
Prof_Klyzlr

Shades of...

Dear MRHers,

Not sure why, but I'm having deja-vu back to the Arcadia Terminal HO layout in March 1995 MR...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

 
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The Glorious Tachikoma Active Member 73 posts
The Glorious Tachikoma

Piqued interest

Prof, do you perhaps have a scan of said track plan, or a link? It's not even in MR's track plan database.
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