This post has been trimmed to better fit with MRH's blog style and to get more to the point for readers.  If you'd like to read the full article on my blog you are welcome to do so here.

Operations up Little Creek

Before putting pencil to paper (or mouse to CAD program in my case) I needed to consider what I wanted the Little Creek Mine to accomplish and the operations that would be required. At the same time, I had to narrow down what I wanted to do inside a space of just over four square feet. These considerations can be broken down into two major categories, prototypical and operator requirements.

Prototypical requirements:

• Both a mine and a camp need to be serviced
• Trains need to run from the base of the gulch (staging) to the top of the gulch (also staging)
• In keeping with the chosen historical era and setting, all rolling stock will use link and pin couplers
• A method of turning the locomotive is not strictly required, but always beneficial
• A place to make repairs on mine equipment and railroad equipment is also not strictly required, but beneficial

Operator requirements:

• Ability to run and operate trains from both the front and back of the train layout
• Interesting but simple track arrangement that makes operations engaging
• Accessibility of trains at all points along the route
• Easy method of adding or removing cars from the layout

The operations I which to replicate is to have my little porter locomotive crawl out of bed every morning at the mining camp and run up and down the gulch shuttling cars of ore down to the ‘big’ 36 inch gauge railroads running around Lead and Deadwood. The ore is taken down into the valley to be processed and refined. Alongside carloads of ore, the little locomotive needs to shuttle freight up and down the gulch since the wagon roads are difficult to use 9 months of the year. Occasionally the locomotive will transport some people too on an extra flatcar or gondola.

Because of the small space and tight radii that will be required for continuous operation, all rolling stock will have to be two axle designs. The tight radii also makes the use of link and pin couplers more reliable than knuckle couplers, but that element is also historically consistent for an industrial railroad around the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, the operator (me) needs to be able to run the Little Creek Mine from the front or the rear. At home operations will be from the front and at train shows operations will be from the rear. This not only affects the bench work, which you can read about here, but it also affects what I can and can’t do with a track plan.

Little Creek Mine Track Plan

I’m going to skip over the actual development of a track plan and the evolution of design. There will be other opportunities in the future to show how a design goes from an idea to a physical creation. In this case, the track plan is very simple and only took a bit of editing and refinement to come up with what I have now. The track plan I will be following is a pretty simple one that uses a couple of unusual tricks to make the most out of the small space.

As I was browsing the preserved micro layout website authored by the late Carl Arendt I ran across a page in the design gallery dedicated to the use of turntables for small layout design. I knew the page existed but it had been a few years since I last checked in on the scrapbook. Anyways, while the turntables were being used to save space I couldn’t help but notice a couple of common issues.

First, the turntables were WAY too long to be realistic. Turntables generally wouldn’t hold both a locomotive and several pieces of rolling stock. Even on little mining trams the portable turntables used down in the mines would only rotate one cart at a time. Basically, the turntables used on these micro layouts operated more like a sector plate or a transfer table, both being substitutions for tail tracks. The second problem was that the designs relied too heavily on a turntable to be operated properly. Yes, turntables would be used often but the prototype didn’t put them right on the main line!

However, I realized that a turntable can be used as a substitution for a double slip turnout or a crossing and this became an important feature of the track plan. Since I have a mine and a mining camp to serve, there needs to be two spurs going in opposite directions. To get the longest length possible I needed these spurs to cross over each other in an X pattern. But substituting the crossing for a turntable, I not only could align each spur track up to be serviced but I would have a useful way to run around the cars parked on the mainline.

On top of that, the turntable allows enough space for a locomotive servicing track (not shown on the plan). Now the porter will have a place to be parked before and after each operating session! To achieve the same operation with only turnouts, I would need to build five. Now I only need to build two!

The second feature of the track plan that I really love is the use of a hidden track along the side, allowing a space for staging when the layout is at home and is being operated from the front. The hidden track will be underneath a steep slope that separates the spur from the scenic portion of the train layout. During train shows, this same track will be visible from the front via a small window and will be an underground mining scene. This feature is therefore also doing double duty!

While not strictly prototypical, these features meaningfully add to the operation potential of the track plan and should compliment the other features of the train layout whether it be set up at home or at a train show.

It would have been easy to either focus solely on operations and have a point-to-point track plan with hidden staging behind the backdrop. It would have been equally easy to just add a turnout or two to a loop of track and make the whole train layout a nicely looking diorama with a train moving through the scene. But instead I’ve come up with a track plan that should satisfy both without sacrificing too much real estate or historical accuracy. There is a bit of creative license taken, but this is just the sort of solution a mining company would have done on the real thing under the right circumstances.

If anyone has some ideas or suggestions I'm open to hearing them.  Thank you for taking the time to read through this post and my blog, it's greatly appreciated!