Track Plan

I'm modeling a former NP, then BN, then BNSF, now abandoned branchline out of Seattle, WA. I only have room to model the area of Redmond, and Issaquah. The branchline in this time table reached all the way to North Bend, but was eventually cut back to Issaquah.

One of the difficulties of outdoor modeling is creating track plans that take into account the ground. In my case, my backyard slopes away from the house, towards the top left hand corner of the drawing. As a result, I had to have a 4% grade from the staging yard to the main layout area. Not ideal, but I know I can handle the max 10 car trains with ease (I once pulled 32 cars up a 150' of 4% grade in the rain). This also presents access issues. I have two removeable bridge sections that span from the garage area door way, and what's labeled as "Sammamish River Crossing". This allows regular walkway access to the backyard when ops sessions are not taking place. By making these compromises, I can have both the staging yard around 43" high along with the main layout section about 45" above the ground. If I had not dropped the grade, the section of Redmond would have been 70+" above ground. 

Note each grid square equals 2'.
image_519 by Craig Townsend, on Flickr

image_520 by Craig Townsend, on Flickr 

I'll add some more posts later with detailed descriptions of the different 'scenes' of the layout and prototype information. 

Do you see any major flaws in the track plan?

Below are the plat maps that I've based the drawings off. 

Redmond

Issaquah

Double-take

I had to do a bit of a double-take when you said you had to take the slope of your backyard into account. That's what I get for not reading the whole subject line... 

Looks like you had a pretty good discussion going on this back in 2018, I'll be interested in seeing what progress you've made since then. 

@ Jeff

I forgot I posted this in 2018 ( looks like some of the picture links are broken).

Between 2018, and now my wife and I sold our first house and purchased a new to us house (2019). The track plan is very similar in design, but a much longer run. First house was 950 sq ft, this one is a 1700 sq ft. 

My first impression.

My first impression. Looks awesome and I want to run your big trains.

Is that 8 car spots at Darigold? Is the runaround in Issaquah big enough? 

Greg

@ Greg

Greg,

I'm hoping to have the track to Redmond done by this spring, and slowly build towards Issaquah. I think I have enough rail on hand to do most. It's only finding the time to build the layout. Redmond has the substructure built already and it just waiting for the track laying team.

Darigold supposedly had up to 9 car spots. 4 on the spur and the rest on the main. I'm not even sure how they loaded the cars on the main.

And obviously the run around at Issaquah was much larger than I can model, but what I've heard it was a pain to use the run around when Darigold had both a full spot and full pull. So I wanted to replicated that a bit with a smaller 6 car run around. I maybe able to make the Issaquah run around a bit larger once I get it built. This was one of the reasons I was told that the runaround got moved in the 90's to the RR west of Darigold vs the RR east like it was in the 70's and 80's. 

I'm also not sure that every ops sesson Darigold would have a full spot, I think it was much more common to only have 3-5 cars. 

This is how I forsee it operating. Spot/pull Redmond, leave pulls for return trip. Spot/pull St. Regis. Then grab the loads at Darigold on the main and shove to the run around. Shove whatever cars you need onto the team track to make more room on the runaround, do the run around, pull the team track cars, go back to Darigold...

I like that operations plan

I like that operations plan for Darigold. Should add a little challenge.

Should be fun

I hope it's slightly challenging but not too challenging. And it's also semi prototypical. 

I've got an initial goal of having the layout operational by next spring in case Soundrail actually runs. Knowing that, I would probably need it done by fall to get a few operations sessions in to work the kinks out. Realistically, it's probably more like 2023-4 before it's ready to go public but your welcome to come check it out anytime.

Staging Yard constraints & construction

Now that I've shared my track plan, I'll post some information about the layout build so far, and in the next few days hopefully a few more details of areas that I plan to build.

As with any layout design, I've had a list of givens and duthers that I had to work around. One of the biggest ones was that I had to make sure I had a fully functioning garage to park the car in for storage and repair projects. This made designing the staging yard a bit challenging as I wanted to get as many tracks in without losing storage space, or  even operational aspects. 

Another given was that the layout was going to be at least 36". I had built my previous garden railroad at ground level and quickly realized that it was not the ideal height. I had previously seen a outdoor railroad that was constructed using a revolutionary technique. I'll give more examples of the type of construction I used for the outdoor portion in another post.

Another given that I had to deal with was the slope and topography of the yard. All of these constraints made it necessary to survey the yard to figure out grades, layout heights, and general measurements.

Looking railroad east in the area of Redmond

Looking railroad west in the area of Redmond. You can really see the slope of the yard in this photo. The yellow line in the photo is a string marking level line. 

Initially, I thought about making the whole 16' of staging yard a complete sliding drawer like I've seen in smaller scales, but quickly threw that idea out as it wouldn't allow switching moves to take place, and it would be massively heavy full of rolling stock. 

As a result, I ended up with the design I posted above where I have 4 staging yard tracks with a transfer table on the far end to allow run around movements on 3 of the 4 tracks. 

At the layout end of the staging yard, I added a few short tracks that allow for caboose or locomotive storage. The entire thing isn't the most ideal length, but it maximized the amount of room I had available. I also cut down the minimum turnout size to #4 & #6 (the outdoor portion has #9 like the prototype) to gain a few more inches of room on each track. 

The height of the staging yard was also predetermined (and thus made it necessary to have the 4% grade). I knew that in order to maximize the garage space for the car, kids toys, and general storage I had to store as many tools under the staging yard. 

Thankfully, I had a few large metal drawers, and some free kitchen cabinets I found on Craigslist. The two cabinets stacked on top of each other measured 43". I measured my tablesaw with the fence attached, and it was just under 43". This would allow the table saw to slide under the other portion of the staging yard, clearing up more space. Using a combination of these materials, and some 2x4 framing, I created a 2'x 16' table that was the base for the staging yard.

On the garage door side of the staging yard, I built a 1 track transfer table using drawer slides. 

The transfer table is 4' long so it fits 2 50' pieces of rolling stock or a matched set of locomotives. I gained substantial amounts of room by not needed turnouts on this end. 

After the staging yard was built, I increased the storage capacity even more by building a series of shelfs. These also run a majority of the 16' length. 

@Craig

Craig,

I'm enjoying following your build saga and look forward to more postings from you.  That transfer table is pretty ingenious!

Another outdoor railroader who built his layout up at about a 3 foot elevation (varies with terrain) is John Morrison, an Australian who lives in Redmond.  Have you seen his layout?  He has been featured in Garden Railways several times, and employed a nifty idea of making roadbed out of PVC strips (like, 1x3s, I think).  

Al Carter, Mount Vernon, WA

IE John Morrison

Al,

I've never seen John's layout in person but I have operated plenty of times with John at Dave Goodson's Friday night ops. John was one of the regular Friday night crews when I started doing ops with the crew back in 2000 time frame. I operated pretty regularly at Dave's from 2000-2003 when I lived in Redmond. How many high school kids, take a 1.5 hour bus ride with a plywood box full with a GP9, spare battery car, and caboose to go operate with a bunch of old farts on a Friday night? That was me! I got hooked into ops really quick, and knew a lot of the ops crew as co-workers from Eastside Trains. I've heard that Dave has cut back his ops sessions from every Friday down to once a month, but that was before Covid hit, so I'm not sure what the railroad schedule looks like these days. 

Goodson has a variety of track height from ankle to eye level, so over the course of those years, I really discovered what the best height was for me (36-45" range). With my first layout, I just wanted to build something (is it a chainsaw layout when you build it on the ground?) so didn't take the time to research elevated layouts.

Here's a photo of the old layout. Weeds and everything. It was a simple loop with a few spurs for switching. But it proved to me what I didn't want, and I realized it got boring running in circles all the time. I liked the look of the wood chip paths, and will eventually get wood chip paths on this new layout. Outdoor layouts are as much about landscaping as model railroading!

Construction methods

I alluded in an earlier post that I've built part of the layout already. With this post, I'll explain the construction methods and some progress photos of what I've got done.

What's going on in the photo below?

So how the heck did am I building this layout?

One of the layouts that I have been following online for years was the Port Orford Railroad down in Oregon (sadly the railroad is now gone). Richard had some innovative ideas about how to build an elevated railroad. One of the major problems with elevated layouts is drainage. How do you solve that issue? Being in Western Washington, we get a lot of rain, so drainage is a huge consideration. Richard figured that if pressure treated decks lasted 15-20 years, why wouldn't a similar construction method work for an elevated railroad. Thus the Port Orford elevated railway method was built.

Step 1. Build a frame using pressure treated lumber. Frame it just like you would a deck. 16" or 24" joists. 

Step 2. Hardware cloth layer. (Sorry don't have any photos of this step, but you'll see the layers later. This provides the strength for step 3. By building the framework on 24" centers, the max span of the hardware cloth is 24" which is plenty. If fact it might be overkill as some folks have gone 36"-48" centers on joists.

Step 3. Landscape fabric. This layer allows for ballast, dirt, scenery items, etc to be built on top without falling through. What does fall through? Water! We just had 10" of snow on the layout and it completely drained without issues.

Step 4. Ladder roadbed. I constructed the first section with cedar 2x6 lumber that I ripped into 1/4" wide strips. It works, but I'm going to try PVC strips on the next section to compare the two.

Step 5. Add a fascia edge, apply dirt, and ballast. I use play sand to fill in the ladder roadbed. It's cheap, and easily available.

For ballast I use a product called "Bridge Topping" produced and sold by a local rock company. It is a bit overscaled (more like rip rap sized) but I think it does a decent job of representing ballast and it's cheap and again easily available. 

I'm building a photo diorama, and I'm sifting the ballast into two sizes and it looks much better. But I'm also gluing that down vs just dumping and reapplying every spring.

And that's it. Simple right?

Redmond

Acute observers will notice in this photo spray paint markings...

I haven't gotten track laid yet in Redmond (this is my goal this spring), but I did complete a mockup on nice afternoon this winter.

This view would be looking RR east along Cleveland St & Leary Way

Approximate view of similar angles

I'll post more later about T-D Feeds and that monster of a building and the focal point of the layout. Got to try and keep everyone hanging on a thread about my progress!

Very cool

Keep posting and keep us up to date on your progress. Looks awesome.

@Craig

Craig,

Dave Goodson!  What a character (and his brother Pete, too)!  I also operated a few times on Friday evenings at Dave's, back in the 90s.  I can remember going into one of those outbuildings, where he and others smoked cigars and added a "bracer" to their coffee.  Smoke was so thick, you could hardly see the trains.  My wife told me that I stink when I'd return home...

Did you work at Eastside Trains?  I was their first "HO guy", working part time for about 5 years in the 90s.  I was with them at the Houghton location and helped with the move to their new building in downtown Kirkland.  Then I left and worked for a year with Bob Colley at North End Trains.

Really like your progress photos showing the development of the raised benchwork.  This looks like a well engineered and thought out plan.

Al Carter, Mount Vernon, WA

@Al

I worked at Eastside Trains from 2000-2003 with a few of the old crew from the Houghton location.

Dave and his brothers are a hoot. My grandparents lived a few miles away from Dave so on Friday nights my parents would go have dinner with my grandparents. After I was done at Goodson's, I'd called my folks up and they would pick me up. Sometimes we headed home and sometimes we went back for the 10 pm news and ice cream my grandpa did every night. Grandma and my mom would say I stunk of cigar smell... 

When my folks heard about my outdoor layout plans, the very next thing they said was "when are you breaking out the cigars and having Friday night ops". 

Signature Scene T-D Feeds

The major signature scene on my layout is going to be a full 1 to 1 scaled feed mill that was located in Redmond, WA from around 1914, and torn down in 2001.

Researching the history of the feed mill over the past 10+ years has been just as interesting to me as modeling the actual mill. 

The building according to the 1967 tax assessment was "a big mess, started by making one building out of 4 folio sheets; portions added time to time, all basically cheap frame general purpose sheds...This whole setup appears to be outdated and unable to compete.."

Sounds like a perfect model railroad structure then? Photo below is ca 1980's

Before I get to the model, here's a brief history of the structure. Originally built in 1914, the structure was 42' by 114' when it was owned by Nordquist Feed Mill. I'm sure the exact dates, but Nordquist sold the property to Western Farm Association who ran the feed store until they sold the property to Lowell DeYoung and his partner Bud Thompson (hence the name T-D) in 1970. T-D Feeds remained in operations from 1970-2000.

Using the tax assessor files, I was able to get a footprint of the building.

Using this information ten years ago, I created a CAD drawing using Sketchup's photo matching tool with the pictures I had saved. Ironically, when I was finished with the drawing, most of the major structure was within a few inches (my CAD drawing would show 24' 6', when the drawing called out a structure 24' long). 

View of T-D Feeds, ca late 80's- early 90's

Cleveland St view from tax assessors file. I'm guessing late 70's?

During this time frame about 10 years ago or so, I started construction of T-D Feeds using 1/8" styrene for the structure. The structure measures 6' x 7'. Sadly, since I started construction, the model has seen better days and needs rebuilding before it gets added to the layout.

I didn't much built beyond this stage before I put the building into storage.

Here you can see the remaining pieces placed on the layout during a mockup day. As you can see I have a lot of work to do to get it back to its 10 years ago stage. The "small" building on the right is 42' x 114" and housed the store front area. When completed the building will be 6'x7'x 45" tall. I figure it will be approximately 6'-7' off the ground when everything is done. My plan this spring is get the track laid in Redmond and build up T-D Feeds. I'll most likely keep using some sort of plastic material to build the substructure.

Recently, I've been working on building a feed truck to be used as part of the scenery for the feed mill scene. When I get some progress on the layout, I will add more to this thread. 

A Beautiful Monstrosity

I love buildings with character like this, built over years as the business grew and eventually declined. 

Years of research

After years of researching this building, I can date it fairly well now by decades based on additions and other changes. I'm just really mad at myself for not taking pictures before it was torn down. But then again, I had no clue I wanted to model it then!

I've been trying to think of creative ways to layer the model building in manner that would allow subassemblies to be built. I might try using magnets and metal plates.

And once I get going on this building again, I've got to decide if I want to buy a roll of aluminum for the siding or just start collecting cans. Each pop can gets 2-4 scale 4x8 sheets of siding after running it through a paper crimper.

Woodinville Staging Yard

Before I started this layout building blog, I posted a construction thread on the Woodinville MOW shack. In an effort to organize things better I'm linking to that thread and posting the final construction photos here.

The intent behind the building is to represent the Woodinville Yard where the Issaquah local switched out cars before heading up the branch to Redmond and Issaquah. My staging yard is quite small (4 tracks, with maybe 10-12 cars worth of room) but I think it will do a decent enough job of representing Woodinville. It will also allow operators to get a sense of 'place' once the facade labeling is in place.

1/25th vehicle projects

I've recently been distracted by the building of 1/25th scale plastic model kits for the layout.

First up was a '66 Chevy pickup truck that I based off this prototype photo I found.

It was pretty much a shake the box type kit. About the only thing that I did to change things around where to add new side mirrors, build a lumber rack, and add clear window glazing to the side windows. The tenative plan is to use this truck as flexible mini scene with other MOW type vehicles.

Next up is the Pettibone Speed Swing I built a while back based off a HO scale Custom Finishing kit. I built the Pettibone to 1/29 scale as it was a complete scratch build.

Vehicle project #3 & 4

T-D Feed Feed Trucks. I buddy of mine suckered me into this build. It started out as part of a 30 day, $30 build over on largescalecentral.com

Prototype photos. Truck #1

Trailer of truck #2?

Mock up of the idea using 3" PVC pipe.

 I hope to finish up this truck this weekend.

And since I got suckered into building the smaller truck, I figured I might as well build a bigger tractor/trailer set up as well.

This one isn't as far along as the smaller truck yet.

Mockup with the two trucks for a size comparison.

Once I get these feed trucks done, I'm going back to building layout mode. Having these 'fast' projects are a fun way for me to shake up my modeling and not let it get too stale. And yes, I've blown the 30 days, $30 budget a long time ago! 

Decals really make a

Decals really make a difference.

Trucks

The trucks look great Craig. As does the final photos of the MOW building. 

Thanks

Thanks. It least I know one person is following along. 

I really need to wrap these trucks up soon and start a track laying blitz. My goal was to have the layout back operational by spring time. Somehow building these side projects are a nice distraction but I'm to addicted to making everything right I can't just slap them together and call it good.

Feed truck progress update

Started the last few details on the small feed truck to try and cross this build off my list.

Weathering has started on the tank, and I started adding hydraulic lines to the various augers.