A plan is brewing

As mentioned in my previous post, my favorite part to operate on the current layout has been the rural portion contained in the lower left room of the plan at http://www.iaisrailfans.org/gallery/Sub4WestEnd/LayoutPlanMRP2011 .  At 16'x21' (336sf), it's not huge, but I've long found the simplicity of switching the small Atlantic yard and the local elevators to be very relaxing.  Given that, when shopping for a new home, my only stipulations were that it had a basement space available for a layout that was similar to that room, as well as access that'd allow me to get my existing town of Atlantic down there in one piece.  (Oh, and a two-car attached garage - our first on both counts!)  I knew my wife would find something that fit our wants and needs in all other ways.  What we chose had a finished basement family room that could be divided up to allow a layout room of 20'x18'3" (365sf) - perfect for my needs.

Atlantic, Iowa is the epicenter of grain elevator switching on the IAIS.  It's the home of the Rover local, with the big ADM elevator just north of town on the short Atlantic Spur branch, Hancock Elevator to the west and, to the east, a little grain load-out at Wiota, a medium-sized elevator at Anita, and a large West Central facility at Adair.  I already knew I wanted to take the existing town of Atlantic with us to the new place, so the question then became, what else to model?

I ruled out Hancock early on in the process.  I'd already modeled it on the current layout, and due to the way the elevator spur diverges from the main at a sharp angle, I found it to be very difficult to do convincingly without eating up a lot of room in the center of the layout.  My attempt to do so always struck me as looking very model-railroady:

Atlantic Spur was high on my list to model given the large elevator and two fertilizer dealers there.  Then it hit me:  With the way the elevators there and at Adair on the other end of my modeled segment would be oriented toward the aisle side of the shelf and the mainline against the backdrop, could I use a shared staging yard space to also extend both elevators' spur tracks in a way that's kept out of plain sight from operators?  Here's what I'm thinking:

(I hope you'll forgive the crude mock-up, but when the prototype is simple enough that you can model it track-for-track, you might as well take advantage of their own schematics.)

The big elevators at Atlantic and Adair are both served by the IAIS shoving empties beyond the elevators and up those spurs (which are remnants of RI's Audubon branch at Atlantic, and RI's original mainline alignment at Adair), so overlapping and hiding those extensions as shown above would allow me to represent that operation without having to waste dozens of feet of layout space.  This arrangement would also allow me to model and operate the little switchers used by both elevators as the mood strikes, shuffling cars around to load and then positioning the loads for IAIS to pull.

Here's my model of ADM's 45-tonner at Atlantic:

...and here's an Andy Brown pic of Adair's Plymouth switcher sitting on their Fertilizer track.  I just picked up a Walthers Plymouth to model this.

Also, with the Atlantic, Wiota, and Anita elevators being on east-facing stubs and Adair being west-facing, the way the sidings at Anita and Atlantic were used for runarounds and shove moves to serve those elevators, as well as for set-out and pickup locations by the road trains for both empties and loads, made for really interesting operations.  Adding to that was the fact that, while all four elevators shipped most of their grain east in IAIS system hoppers, Atlantic also shipped west in KCS hoppers.

Can you tell I'm excited about this change??

Love the concept....

Joe,

So glad this unexpected move is progressing to your hopes. I look forward to seeing the IAIS Sub 4's development and build out. 

As an aside, all the town names are familiar to someone driving on I-80 from Des Moines to Council Bluffs. I've often thought about detouring to see Atlantic from the interstate but it's usually close to sunset when we pass that way.

Respectfully,

Tim Moran Akron, OH

Joe, I am looking forward to

Joe, I am looking forward to seeing your new layout progress. You are truly one of the top modelers in our hobby.

Good luck with the new layout.

Jeff

Excellent plan

Hi Joe, yes I can tell you are really excited about the new plan. It sounds like you have most of the operational considerations well thought out. It gives you almost everything you said was important in your model railroad. I am looking forward to following your progress. Good luck on your move and dismantling your current layout. While one chapter closes a new and exciting one begins!

Thomas Klimoski

Modeling the Georgia Northeastern Railroad 

You have a winner here

Joe - nice how you used & modfified the prototype operations at Atlantaic and Adair elevators to achieve maximum fun on the "model". Great use of space without having excessive track. 

This will be a fantastic layout. I share your excitement in getting it designed and built. 

Fran Giacoma

Thank you

Thank you all for your very kind replies.  Having you as my "sanity check" through this process has been very helpful in making sure that I'm not missing anything I should be considering.  The last thing I want to do is get this next layout built and then realize there was something really key missing from the concept because I rushed into it.

Tim - I forgot about these towns all being I-80 exits - something that isn't true of McClelland and Hancock on my current layout, I don't believe.  With you passing through this way, I'm determined to convince you (or is it your wife? ) to stop by on one of these trips when it's safe to do so.  Our new place, like our current house, is only about 5 minutes off I-80.

Jeff, you're always very encouraging.  I really appreciate your kind words.

Tom, thank you.  About that "almost everything", I know I told you originally that yard work was my favorite part of operations when I was considering keeping Bluffs Yard, but I later realized that the little yard at Atlantic should scratch that itch with a lot less complexity, as well as being more accessible.  I measured last night, and after trimming away the excess depth at Atlantic, that yard scene on the new layout will only measure about 15-1/2' x 20".

Fran, thanks for your comments.  I'm glad the elevator stuff makes sense.  I realized after my last post that I was wrong to connect the trackage from the two elevators in staging, because they really couldn't share any capacity there.  If both were loading at the same time, I'd need three tracks to be available, since Atlantic takes a single 50-car cut of empties at once, while Adair has theirs split up across their two stub tracks.  Here's the modified schematic.

I should also mention that this is only a schematic, and not necessarily reflective of the layout's footprint at the new place.  To fit this into the space available, I'll almost certainly need to use a peninsula unless I can figure out a way to squeeze staging into an adjacent utility room.  I'm tossing around a couple ideas, but leaning toward a plan where the layout would encircle the room, with the peninsula extending up diagonally across the room from the lower left corner to maximize its length and minimize interference with the path between the room's entry somewhere along the lower wall and the door to the utility room about midway along the right wall.  Staging would be along the right wall, with the Atlantic Spur across the top, Atlantic yard in the upper left corner along the left wall, Wiota in the lower left corner near the base of the peninsula, open running along the left side of the peninsula and Anita behind it on the right, and finally, Adair in the lower right corner, leading back to staging.

Joe  I'll love following this

Joe  I'll love following this new project, and totally understand your need for a change of scenery   It's going to be brilliant!

Sad to See it go but nice to see something new!

Well Sad to see it go and all that but everything has to end at sometime 

Seems like you will be the area I am modeling as well 

If you need any tips for Adair and other areas like that just go ahead and ask me I have tons of family who worked that area in your time frame and even further back to Rock Island
Anyways you have a good one Joe!

Something old IS something new

Joe,

I like the look of this plan a lot.  Having The Rover's operating turf as a big "operational LDE", I think you have picked a winner.  As I told you, my time with that local was VERY enjoyable (although 10+ years after you model)...and was the night I earned my railroad nickname on the Interstate.  I like the overlapping elevator staging (model it as tracks in the woods?).

Andy L.

Update

Mike - Thanks for your encouragement.  I'm really looking forward to this.

Rails of SW Iowa - Thanks for the offer of info.  I'd love to see anything you might have for the segment I'll be modeling.  Any chance you could share your name...or just your first name?

Andy - Thank you!  That means a lot to me.  But now I've gotta ask...what's the RR nickname you earned on the Rover?  It must have been good if you're keeping it quiet.

As with a lot of home sales around here right now, ours went fast.  The current house went on the market Tuesday and we had an offer for over our asking price first thing Wednesday morning.  So here we go!

Visited the new house again.  One of the advantages of buying a model home - we can take more measurements and pics every day they have "visiting hours".  Here's the future train room end of the basement:

In the lower right corner you see the stairway up to the main floor, and just to the left of that, a hallway back to a bathroom and storage room.  Toward the back on the right is the door to the utility room with the furnace, A/C, and water heater.

Plan A was to partition off that entire end of the basement with just a single door into the layout room, meaning the only access to the utility room would be via the layout.  That might have been okay if I only needed to access that room occasionally as long as I made the lift-out and aisles wide enough to accommodate an eventual need to replace all that big hardware.

However, over time I started to realize that not everything I was considering for this layout was going to fit with the amount of "breathing room" I wanted between towns.  The solution I settled on was to use the utility room to house the ADM elevator at the end of the Atlantic Spur, as that would allow me to move staging closer to Atlantic.  With that, the idea of using that lift-out to access ADM, and the impact that would have on the Adair scene, started to lose its appeal.

Plan B is to make the utility room door accessible via a hallway outside of the layout room.  This would shrink the bottom right portion of the layout, but I could more than compensate for that by moving the new L-R wall we're adding a couple feet further into the family room.  That still leaves plenty of room for the latter and generous aisles for the layout.

While the two elevators won't share overlapping space in staging as a place to spot empties, I'll still be able to model this practice by way of ADM's spur in the utility room and Adair's dual stub tracks extending into staging.

Here's a rough sketch, not to scale.  A few notes:

• The layout entry door is indicated by the dotted lines for the swing gate at the bottom
• The dark gray in front of staging represents the high view block fascia like I've used on my current layout - short enough to reach over, but tall enough to block our view from most vantage points
• This plan will allow the main portion of the layout to be built with just 8 new turnouts, plus another 4 for Harlan Elevator.  It's possible that a handful of additional turnouts would need to be rebuilt at the extreme ends of the Atlantic LDE as well, but I should be able to rebuild staging using only components recycled from the existing layout.

This plan for ADM will also have the advantage that I can use the track passing through staging to represent the elevator until I get around to building the utility room extension itself.  Also, the prototype Atlantic Spur has a gap where it's inaccessible from public roads in the area where the model is passing through staging out of sight on the layout, so as a train of empties is shoved up to ADM at a leisurely pace, it won't seem unusual to lose sight of it while the operator walks out of the layout room and around to the utility room so they're in position for spotting the elevator.

Finally, I had to share a pic of the newest model railroader in the family.  Our 3-year-old granddaughter Quinn has been visiting for the last three weeks, and thanks to a recent ride on a museum railroad near her hometown of Las Vegas, she's developed quite an interest in Thomas the Tank Engine and all trains.  As you can see, she takes her model photography (with her toy phone) pretty seriously.

That is adorable

My son just found out that I can print BRIO train tracks using the 3D printer, so now he wants to play with his trains all of the time.

Reading the diagram right?

If I'm looking at the drawing, you have to walk down the narrow hallway to access the ADM elevator?

Update

Thanks Juxen.  It's been a lot of fun having Quinn here.  As we drive around town, I've got an extra set of eyes to call out "Train!" for me.

Craig, that's correct about the hallway, but it shouldn't be narrow.  I believe code is at least 36", and the hallway is only 8' long. 

Essentially, it was appearing as though my choices were to go with this option or do without ADM altogether, since I didn't like how tightly-packed the rest of the layout appeared if I did a linear Atlantic-Atlantic Spur (ADM)-Staging-Adair arrangement.  Double-decking is out of the question for me - too much complexity for my needs - so my choices were to do away with either Adair or ADM, or to put ADM in that back room.  I can also build just the track passing through staging to represent ADM and see whether I want to proceed with the elevator itself, but I think I will.  With its siderods and small stature, that little 45-tonner is too interesting not to give it a place to run.  

I wouldn't normally consider isolating ADM like that, but on the prototype, once trains leave the mainline to head up the spur, there's not an easy way to follow them close to the tracks, so I'd typically just head straight for the elevator anyway.  That's essentially what operators would be doing if I went with this plan.

Fast home sale

Joe,

Congrats on the sale of your home. Fast is good. 

I like it

Joe,

By narrow I meant compared too the rest of the room. I like the idea that the ADM elevator is almost a stand alone layout. Are you going to start with Atlantic?

Thank you

Thanks Scott. We’d heard lots of rumors about fast sales around here, so we were really thankful it worked out that way for us.

Craig, agreed about ADM being a good candidate for its own small layout. I actually blogged about it as a layout candidate back in 2014 -  https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/iaiss-west-end-atlantic-spur-on-a-shelf-12196934

I’m planning to take Atlantic with me from the current layout, so yeah, it should be the first segment in place.  Can’t wait!

Looks great

Hi Joe,

The room for your new layout looks great. I like the track plan you have developed. The ADM Harlan Elevator should be a fun job to switch. Are you planning to have a industry crew work the industry prior to the IAIS crew arriving to pull and spot cars? I really enjoy operating a Trackmobile on my layout to move cars from Imerys to the siding for pickup by the local crew.

I am sure you can't wait to get started on the new layout. Congratulations on selling your house and it looks like you have a conductor in training ready to go once you start operating.

Thomas Klimoski

Modeling the Georgia Northeastern Railroad

New layout design

Joe,

I really like the way the new layout is designed! If I was able to participate in an ops session, I'd sign up for the ADM job in a heartbeat!

Enjoy the time with your 3 year old granddaughter! They grow up so fast ( voice of experience )!

I found this item while looking over your prototype's locations. Might be a fun item to post near the entrance to the railroad room. Jesse James Historical Marker

Thanks for sharing this new layout design with us!

Tim Moran Akron, OH

Fast sales

Congrats Joe. The closing time from listing in my area of Wisconsin they say is 42 days unless it’s a million plus property, then it’s around 220 days. 
 

My son lives in east Austin with really unreal property sale prices. In Spring list to closing was around 50 days. Today because Tesla is building a mile or 2 from him, they come to the door and ask if you will sell for cash in his neighborhood. Also, the selling prices are up.

Just have a good time with the process of the new layout. I am looking forward to this journey and it shall be a good one.

Tom

Interstate nickname

Joe, your new space looks AMAZING.  Having a layout in a finished space is a game-changer.  My current POGB IV is in my secondary family room, and is the first time I have a layout that isn't in a semi-finished basement.  SO NICE. Invest in some canvas drop cloths/runners to protect that carpet when you're making a mess on the layout...it's worth it.

"The Possum."  We'll leave it at that.  - Andy

Sure thing

You can just call me Cameron 

I need to find my photo of 516 passing the Adair bins this summer it might be a little Modern though 

  "so my choices were to do

Sometimes the unconventional approach works best. On my new layout I have a street with industries on both sides which would have been too wide for access if modeled as one scene ,so I put an aisle down the middle of the street. This required adding an extra turnout so the tracks could run down both sides of the aisle but standing there in person it looks okay. When working the east side industries your back is to the west side and vice versa so you can't see both sides at the same time.....DaveB

Thank you

Thanks everyone for your encouragement about the new plan.

Tom K. - Yes, definitely planning to shuffle cars around ADM with their 45-tonner between sessions, or at the beginning or end of a session.  I've always enjoyed moving cars by hand between sessions so they end up on the other side of the spout, helping to sell the story that cars are actually being loaded, and this will be that much more fun getting to watch the 4441's little siderods at work while I do so.

Tim - Sounds like I can count on you for that job!  That Jesse James memorial is interesting.  There's a little spot to pull off of White Pole Road right there along the IAIS.  I'll have to see if I can fit that in on the layout.

Tom O. - I've never seen a market like this.  This whole idea of selling actually kicked off for us by someone randomly sending us a letter asking if we'd be interested in selling.  Their offer was lower than we wanted, but we were just glad they got this ball rolling.  Sounds like appraisals are really the long pole in the tent right now, stretching out 6-8 weeks for many since the appraisers are so backed up.

Possum - I'm afraid we're going to need more details than that.  DM will do fine.

Cameron - Neat pic!  Thanks for sharing that.

Dave - Very creative solution!  I like it.  I'm feeling better about ADM being in that utility room all the time.  It's not a great space, but again, it beats not modeling that elevator at all, so hopefully my operators understand.  Here are a few views:

Looking toward the left where the Atlantic Spur will punch through the wall from staging:

Looking right from that same spot.  Like I said, pretty rough.  Layout shelf will pass in front of all this, but the backdrop will be removable to allow easy access to the gas shut-offs, and the water shut-offs will be accessible underneath.

The "tail" the north end of ADM will wrap around the water heater:

Comfort

I see several people like your track plan, but I'd like to make an observation or two if you don't mind.  That looks like a really comfortable carpeted room, ideally suited to enjoyable construction and operating sessions.  But I would be a little weary of devoting nearly a quarter of the precious wall space in that room to a staging function that would get partially blocked off, while operators would end up spending considerable time in that (admittedly not-so-bad) utility room to switch the ADM elevator, which takes up what looks like pretty much the same amount of layout space as that which is occupied by the staging yard itself.

I understand the desirability of creating some physical separation between the elevator trackage and the mainline, but there must be a way to do that in the nice, comfy layout room itself, while pushing staging into the utility room.  I suggest a continuous mainline connection in the layout room, partially hidden behind ADM, while perhaps feeding the staging via a wye connection if it is not possible to bend it in the utility room enough to permit a connection back to the main at its other end.

It would also avoid the need for the Atlantic Spur to cross the main where it enters the staging area.  To me that's a potential collision just waiting to happen on a regular basis, especially if the local negotiates the crossing while its engineer walks the long way around to reach the utility room.  And it may take considerable time for him to do so, since he has to either duck under the benchwork at the room entrance or wait for the main to clear in order to operate a lift-up or swing gate there.  His train might hit parked cars or the 45-tonner before he got there, not to mention any derail you will likely install in the vicinity of the elevator.

A wye + stub staging arrangement forfeits the ability to readily loop all staged trains around the room, but it does make it easier to restage trains between sessions so that they return from where they left.  And, yes, I would try to at least make the staging ladder(s) visible from select positions in the main layout room in order to avoid rolling through them "blind".  A staging "mole" could inhabit the utility room as needed, without occupying aisle space or performing unrealistic actions in view of the other operating crews.  You could have multiple shelves to hold rolling stock in that room, rather than having them distractingly occupy a prominent wall above the layout in the main room.

You probably already considered that possibility (it is after all very similar to the way your track schematic works) and discarded it; there obviously might be other considerations that escape me.

Dominic