Limited Space

The shelf space is only a total of 18” deep, and the space between those two boards is about 6 feet in length.
 


 
(that foil shaped rectangular opening was a window that will be covered over with blue solid board matching the other wall covering)

I need one thru track on that upper deck area that can 'mask' some of the trains that are carrying coal, etc, that would NOT be passing in front of the container port, nor the SantaFe station. So I am imagining that track to be installed back very close to the back wall of that deck area,...and hidden from view by some sort of a view block, or multiple stacks of containers.

I'm imagining 2, maybe 3 tracks running down the front edge of that container area, one that will be the other mainline of two, and one that will be a Santa Fe passenger train track.

So that's at least 3 tracks I have running down that length of upper deck. That does NOT leave much area for container operations, and or container cranes, ships etc. I'm thinking that most all of the ships, cranes, etc will have to be painted background images? …..maybe something like these?
 


 

Does anyone have some good reference photos, or know of good background images that are available??

I have PLENTY of containers I can use to create stacks in the area. And likely I need at least one spur track to hold container cars? Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Trainboard doesn't share

Trainboard doesn't share photos. 

Doesn't share, really?I was

Doesn't share, really?I was led to believe that they were one of the originators, and their TrainImages appeared often everywhere.

Have to go back and punt.

I was trying to solve a multiple forum problem without going to an 'other than train forum' to post photos,...to avoid another photobucket issue.

I reposted the photos, hope they came out?

Photos

They are now visible. 

Printed Backdrop

I was doing a brief look thru google images this morning, and their are a TON of images of container ports.

I imagine that a person could chose one and have it printed out on a long piece of paper,vinyl, whatever these days?

I think Bill Brillinger offered such a service if I remember properly?

You need a view from the back of the"hammerhead" cranes.

A view such as you show in your example with the ship in front of the cranes puts your terminal in the water.  That may be a problem for you because the only way to get the proper view of things is from a street view.  A view from inside the terminal would be better, but only an employee can get that view for you.

Google Images

I was looking thru quite a number of google images of container yards/ports yesterday, but as you've mentioned Russ, many of them are not the best viewpoint for my needs.

My original thoughts were that I would have a LOT of containers stacked in the foreground, then the cranes & ship(s) in the background,..painted on the backdrop.

I didn't think I would have enough space for the train loading equipment. But I ran across a few images I have saved that has me rethinking if I could limit some of those large stack of containers to those at the 'view block' area along the rear wall,...then provide some train loading equipments in the foreground.
 

Port of LA

...not that I would have any room for this massive system, but I did find this interesting,
 

https://www.portoflosangeles.org/business/supply-chain/rail

Another Track Entrance to Container Yard

...just brain storming..

I was thinking I may well need another track entering the container yard? ...likely NOT from that end with the SantaFe station,..so how about the other end?

I looked at the two mainlines I had at that end, and took notice of the short piece connecting the two using 2 curved turnouts (I call them double curves). Could I fit another turnout in there to feed a spur line into the container yard? perhaps it might even go past an entrance announcing the port?
 

I did a little experimenting with what turnout might be used, a regular med Peco or another dbl-curve
 

I prefer the use of 3 dble-curves
 

Correct viewpoint image

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Stacking_Intermodal_container_in_Port_of_Chittagong_(17).jpg

Latest thoughts on general arrangement

As I mentioned back here  https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/container-port-ideas-images-12213693

I think I am going to pursue this newer idea of less containers, and more tracks and container cranes in my limited space. Going to play with ideas today.
 

I may even have to stack up containers over that hidden track at the rear so it appears the stacks continue right on back to ship unloading area. But I'm thinking those containers in the back rows could be glued together in several large 'clumps' so as to be removable in clumps for any derails etc on that hidden track?

Need to take into consideration the adjoining 'SantaFe Station', so I may do a quicky mock-up today.

As I log onto the MRH forum....

... there is a huge banner ad for RailroadBackdrops.com. They claim to have a Baltimore Harbor scene, although the website is apparently being updated and I cannot access it.

I've visited ICTF terminal many times and it is a massive operation. UP frequently operated 8-10 trains outbound (with a similar count inbound) in the peak off-dock era in the early to mid-2000's. It was (and probably still is) the largest near-dock operation of its kind. By definition, a near-dock facility is not on the water. Referencing the photos you have posted, you seem to be looking for a water background.

Trainload intermodal facilities are huge land hogs. Just a few cranes and the loading aprons take a huge amount of real-estate. Your aspiration to model to model Baltimore, which has a smaller sized container handling facility, may still be a little outsized. Not sure it wouldn't be better to think about the facility to be off stage and give the impression of a containerport on stage.

Most container ports have large "CY"s adjacent to them to stage empty containers. Just think of a a fenced in facility with a container handling machine (packer or reach-stacker), piles of empty containers and a few staged chassis. They generally (but not always) are not rail served. You could use a wall of containers as camouflage to hide the fact you don't have a footprint for simulating the real deal. It seems you want to have a little water and shipping in the background. For a small, near-dock  rail served facility, click on the NWCONTAINER link below. They operate rail shuttle services on Union Pacific to the Seattle/Tacoma area to their land-locked Portland facility. The PDXcontainer link shows a CY.

https://pdxcontainer.com/

http://www.nwcontainer.com/

Not sure I've helped. Good luck.

Bob

Omaha

Balt & LA container facilities

Let me try to clarify just a bit. When I first began to consider this container train subject (because I had collected quite a few container train cars & containers), I naturally thought of them being associated with the ocean ship that would bring them to our shores and take them away. In particular when I found out about the huge 'system' that brought Asian trade to the US, then put it on trains across the country, then a lot of it back onto ships for Europe etc. I said I need a container port on the west coast, and one on the east coast for my 'transcontinental railroad'.

Of course in my mind was the ocean shipping aspect associated with containers,...thus my initial desires to have the ships unloading in the background.

LA and/or west coast: This is my origination point for my container trains to travel across the country. I have firmly decided this will appear the upper deck of my layout just down from the 'Santa Fe train station' . If I do it haveway decent I can have a background image at that location that depicts lots of containers and ships, and ship loading cranes way off in the background.     ...maybe even something like this that was recently sent to me
https://goo.gl/maps/oLq1g6aXa7xUtxSJ6

Baltimore: My Baltimore destination is going to located on the lower deck of my layout. More specifically its container facility is going to be out on a portion of the center peninsula area. There is no way that I have thought of to have it look as though it is part of a shipping port. Rather I'm just going to imagine that the container cranes there unload the trains and stack the containers in a big yard (that's imagined also to be in the aisle space). 
My thoughts at the moment is those container cranes in Baltimore might look something like these,..
https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/container-crane-scaleoo-176-almost-ho-12211481   (just like the unique look of these).

BTW: The track and structure layout of that center peninsula area is another unfinished project,...have some general ideas, but who knows until I start with my 'full-scale' planning methods.
https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/full-size-paper-templates-of-trackplan-12211674

I don't know how much coast to coast container shipping

is done via rail.  If the ships are small enough to use the Panama Canal, there would be virtually no rail transport from one port to another.  When I worked for Sea Land, their ships are too big to fit through the Panama Canal, so they ran a "land bridge" from Long Beach to Houston via the S.P. (now U.P.)  Containers were sent from the Port of Long Beach to the S.P. main street yard (now they would go to ICTF) by truck and then were loaded on double stacks and sent to Houston.

I worked in the Harbor for 11 years, and then the terminal that I worked for was closed and I went back to work for Carrier-Transicold for the next 17 years before I retired in 2006.  In 1988 when I left the harbor, the only terminal that had rail service directly from ship to train or train to ship was ITS in Long Beach.  I think they were actually owned by K Line, but serviced other shipping companies as well.  The rest of the terminals sent containers to ICTF for rail transport.

I know nothing about shipping into/out of Baltimore.  I think the biggest port on the East Coast is Elizabeth, New Jersey.  I don't know if there are any shipping terminals back east that have rail service on the terminal.  Out here ITS was close to a rail line and had enough space to put in a couple of tracks around the edge of the property to handle the trains.

If the water became a sea channel,

[attach:fileid=403444_12_vfxTF6/66v6+1XW+v//Z]i

Brian I took the liberty of running the scene through photoshop as I was taken with the pic, Love cranes boats, ports.

Shipping Coast to Coast

@Russ
I do realize that that my 'coast-to-coast' theme may be a bit imaginary, but it has been prompted by my early train buying experiences

Maybe I misread the original clip I saw about those containers coming all the way to the east coast,...maybe most went to Texas for forward shipping to Europe.

But I needed them to come to Balt,..big port,  plus the original city in the USA for the American railroads
B&O Centenary Pageant Celebration   https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/bo-centenary-pageant-celebration-12212125

Port of Prince Rupert has an

Port of Prince Rupert has an interesting 'on-water' container terminal  

Hidden Track Influence

One of the initial and very important influences on the development of my container port scene is, 'how do I incorporate that hidden track I wished to utilize to 'hide' some of the trains from having to pass in front of the LA Santa Fe station and the container port scene,....trains such as coal trains, tank car trains, etc'. Just certain types that I would prefer ran UNSEEN thru the west coast container port area. I spoke about some of that over HERE.

Now I have done some more experimenting that I will present here.

I started out with this idea,...
 

Rather quickly I began to think I would need a top on that tunnel over the track so I could stack a few containers on top of the tunnel. Probably I can make this stack of containers and tunnel structure all as one UNIT that could be lifted off to access the hidden track.

So what about the height required of the tunnel? Here you can see that I need a height of at least 3 1/4” to get those very tall auto-max cars under.
 

Two things emerged.
1) My tunnel could/should be at least 2 containers wide,...so 2 3/8” which is greater than the 2” wide tunnel I was originally contemplating,...great.
2) Depending on the height(s) of the tracks underneath there might be some variation in the height of the top of the tunnel. At any rate it appears that the top of my tunnel is/was going to be such that it intersected the stack in an uneven manner,..about half way up the height of a std container. What to do about this?
 

My next thoughts turned to the fact that the concrete pads of the container port would need to be high enough to be even with the tops of the rails in the container loading area. So here are 3 of those mock-ups, with the tunnel track mounted down at plywood surface height as well.
 
...the green box car is an overheight box car I stuck in there to see if I might just make my hidden track tunnel clearance a bit shorter? (Turns out I have firmly decided that this tunnel MUST be full height to accept all of double height container cars, dbl-auto racks, etc)
 

Next I cut out a paper template to represent the tunnel size (with and height),..its at the end of that green box car
 

 

So that tunnel over the hidden tracks is going to have to be painted on its outer-side with some image of stacked containers,..with the upper one just a partial view.

But how about this?,..... bring the tunnel side all the way up to this next 'even container height' (height of 3 containers), put a top on it, and stack another container on the top of that so the whole stack against the back wall appears to be 4 containers high??

Late to the discussion but a

Late to the discussion but a half model is very convincing.  An old scene from the layout I built for the Just Trains Hobby Shop in Concord CA.  Russ

Train Mountain

That is quite a model train layout you have there Russ....WOW

I think one of your locos would be bigger than my whole shed.

Container Sizes, etc

I was just recently experimenting around with some various HO model containers I have of various sizes. Some of them were not stacking up exactly correctly as I thought they might. My initial thought was perhaps some of these model makers did not use the exact correct dimensions. Then I read this, and now I understand what is happening

I happened upon this submission by a gentleman who spent a long career in the intermodal transportation business.

They are not only the attachment points for IBC's, but also the lifting points for the cranes. The spreader bars only extend out to 40ft. Also domestic 48ft, 53ft containers are 102'' wide. All international 20ft/40ft containers are 96'' wide so they fit in the container ship racks that are designed so they slide in racks and can be stacked 9 high. No domestic 45ft, 49ft, 53ft can be loaded in a ship container rack. They used to ship some 45ft container on ship, but they were fastened to the deck...until banned from use. You also can't stack any 48ft/53ft containers over 3 high when empty. They are just not designed to hold the weight. All International containers are made out of cor ten steel. Also most all older 53ft cans like the one JB Hunt and Schneider had.....had to be grabbed from the side on top to load or unload.......which created a big problem for many Intermodal yards that did not have a crane with a spreader bar that could be lifted from the side. Eventually the Railroads and the shippers got together and made them all standard. So now they all can be lifted from the top at the 40ft. mark where the container is heavily reinforced.....where the wider side bars are. The end holes in the 53ft. containers are only for when it is mounted on a chassis.......twist locks on the back and steel pins that slide in the front holes after the can is set on the gooseneck of the chassis, then slid forward.

....more here    http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/266975/3022932.aspx

Height of container stack

Hi,

your experiments - I like the fact that you're checking your plans against real models It actually looks like the finished model in a way.

About stacking containers four high on the tunnel - I think if you do that you should have at least one crane that's able to access them. You could lengthen the feet on one of your bridges. You could also have a reach stacker working one corner of the stacks. Even a partial model of a hammerhead crane would work.

In my opinion the model has to be believable. So, if you have high stacks, but all cranes on scene are smaller than the stacks, then I'd be put hard to believe in the mechanics Does that make sense?

No matter what I think, the scene looks fairly good as it is.

Have fun!

PS: have you considered lifting the whole container port scene by half an inch or so, compared to the hidden track? Or sinking the hidden track some? That should give you half a container's height?

Lot to like here

This was posted over on another subject thread about 'container loading cranes'. I like the looks of it,...and it makes use of the affordable Mi-jack cranes, And I can make a scene like this fit in my space.

I do realize the Mi-jacks don't normally straddle 2 tracks, but it looks real acceptable to me. I'm going to do some experimenting with the track arrangement as to whether to have 2 tracks side-by-side, or perhaps to either side of a central truck delivery roadway.

my 2 tracks vs that 4 track yard

I don't have the shelf depth to have 4 tracks in my container yard, rather I will have to settle for 2. I can have 2 or 3 of those cranes down the length,...probable just 2 as it is a rather short length. Now lets see about the spacing of those tracks under the crane(s).
 

I'm partial to the tracks being located to either side of the central roadway? It appears a little less congested that way??