First Layout - (another) Miami Industrial Switching shelf layout


mschreuder said:
Well, here's another shot at it. I moved the run-around track up to the North wall taking advantage of the 'mainline' track. The industry spurs are a little longer, which might make for a tiny bit more running time as the switcher shuttles back and forth between them.

One thing I am pondering is how to handle the industry on the inside track of the northeast corner with it's back facing into the room. A skinny building against the backdrop is easy, but does anyone know of any examples of how to do the skinny building when the back side is facing out into the room? I had thought maybe making a plain back on the building painted to match the benchwork fascia board, but I have trouble visualizing how that would look. Of course the other alternative would be to just let it be a team track and not worry about it.

Thanks for all of the comments and advice so far, it is really helpful!

Larry - I know exactly what you mean about the Antillean Marine yard on the Miami river. It would be a really cool scene to model. I briefly considered doing something with it in the south corner where I have the canal right now, but I decided it would be way too small of an area to do it justice. Maybe that will be in the phase 2 expansion...

btw Anton, love your homepage and everything it stands for :)
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M.

I think having the building near the edge is a great idea. I wouldn't paint it the fasica color. Instead, I would give it a finished exterior and make it wider than the structures lying against the backdrop. You don't need structures deeper than 2.5" to 3.0" on the back wall and set them tight against the back wall. The corners of each building will have trees or whatever hiding the actual depth. One other thing, your streets look about 6" wide. That probably equates to nearly a three lane with the turning lane in the middle.

Bottom line: Get the structures or structure mockups against the backdrop first and then roughly mockup some track. It doesn't have to even be joined together. Once you see what depth you have remaining after this is done, will determine what you have remaining to work with. Remember, some of these tracks run tight to structures, as Lance's prototypical photos show. You can always add 1 x 2" strips to the 18" depth and build it out. My layout started at 18" and I built it out to 22.5" in depth to the inside of the fasica.

IMG_0012-1.jpg
 
In the drawings I arbitrarily picked 6" width for the street 'right of way'. That should be enough to cover me for a two lane street, a couple of sidewalks and some weeds,etc. Better too wide than too tight. I can always make the buildings wider or throw in a dumpster or two.

Actually I have been considering adding another 6" to the width of the east shelf to give me a little more room for scenery and structures. I had considered having a street run continuously from the north, along the edge of the east shelf extension, all the way to the south, but I'm afraid that would be either distracting or just boring. Instead I think that the space would be better used for modeling a small Produce District (2 or 3 buildings) with some of the colorful wall murals and delivery trucks. In particular I think it would be a great focal point to model the "Cuba Tropical" building (http://www.lancemindheim.com/downtown_spur.htm). What a cool focal point that would make! Maybe keep just enough of a strip along the east edge for one lane of traffic, or the sidewalk and curbs to suggest a street...

I llike the idea of starting to put up some temporary mock-ups. I expect there will be a few reality checks when I start laying out the temporary flex tracks and shoeboxes.

Thanks for the ideas!
 
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Wow, I am impressed with the drawings! I am from a suburb of Miami and have plans myself to model parts of the Homestead Sub where the rock pits are serviced and the CSX Miami Subdivision. Looking forward, and Lance's model is really inspirational too! :D
 
That layout looks like it could provde a lot of fun switching. I too am a big fan of Lance Mindheim's CSX layout.
 
DirtyD79 said:
That layout looks like it could provde a lot of fun switching. I too am a big fan of Lance Mindheim's CSX layout.
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I agree. I need to figure out how to incorporate what Lance et.al. have done with their smaller layouts into my larger one.

Kerry
 
So - another question that I've been pondering...

What is a good distance to place a siding track from the (warehouse) building it serves? I imagine that in 1:1 scale, there is some sort of steel bridge plate that is placed between the loading dock floor and the boxcar floor, but what is a typical protypical distance, and more importantly, what is a reasonable distance for HO scale trains and full scale fingers?
 
M

I normally place a section of flex track next the structure and set a piece of rolling stock and a loco on the track. I normally like to keep at least a 1/4" to 3/8" gap between the car/engine and the structure.



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Sounds reasonable - thanks.

Just out of curiousity, in the first picture is the loading dock cast from anchor bolt cement? I like the looks of it.

Also - Are the thin building flats tight against the backdrop on your layout?
 
M,

The loading constructed from strip plastic and not anchor cement. I believe the size of the Plastruct strip framework is about 1/2" wide x 1/4" thick. I got them from my LHS. The frame work is covered with .040 plastic sheet material. I used the corner of a square metal file to gouge the edges to simulate a worn dock. The paint work is nothing more than rattle can flat white with an air brush over spray of reefer gray. I used airbrushed diluted india ink and alcohol to highlight the expansion joints. Lastly, I purchased a charcoal pastel and light brushed it on to side for run marks. A stiff bristle brush works well for this application.


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Forward Progress:
Well I've gotten the last of the benchwork (shelf work?) erected and the foam board glued down. The bench work on the East and south wall were once the home of an aborted attempt at an 'N' scale layout, so the foam was pretty marked up. I decided to give the whole works a coat of some tan latex paint I had laying around. I figured this would give me a clean slate so that when I started marking track centers I wouldn't get confused with the old markings. I also thought that tan would look much better in the short term than pink and it might help me later on when I start ballasting track to already have it painted under the ties.

I'm not quite sure what I want to do about a backdrop on the new north shelf. I could put up a piece of 1/8" masonite like the east wall, but then I would have to work around a thermostat at the far west end of the shelf. The alternative would be to just paint the appropriate section of the drywall the same blue color and let it go at that. The thermostat is a line level style (240v) and I really don't feel like going to the bother of relocating it.
 
While the paint is drying on the benchwork, I decided to start laying out the track using the 1:1 print feature of XTrkCad planning software.

This software is just fantastic, as is the price (Free!). A roll-fed chart printer would have been nice - but I had to suffice with printing the layout on 48 sheets of good old 8 1/2x11 paper.

I decided to assemble (tape together) the track template on the pool table since the layout bench was still wet. This actually worked out better because of the larger space to work with and the lower height. Once the paint on the foam dries, I'll start transferring the track centers to the foam.

In the photos, the thinner section to the right is the north shelf and the wider section is the east shelf.
 
The paint is dry enough, so I move the full scale trackplan plan to the benchwork. Getting everything to line up correctly is a bit of a challenge because the walls are not exactly perpendicular and I need to make sure the track passes through the east wall at the drywall and not at the concrete basement wall.
 
firetacoma said:
What is the best way to transfer centerlines from the print-out to the foam?
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Well... it may not be the 'best' way, but here is what I am doing.

I pin the plan down with push pins every 8-10" so it doesn't shift around, and then I go along with a sharpie marker and push right through the paper into the foam along the track centerline every couple of inches.

Where there is a turnout I put a series of three marks at each of the three legs of the turnout to give me a better chance of getting it lined up correctly.
 
mschreuder said:
Well... it may not be the 'best' way, but here is what I am doing.

I pin the plan down with push pins every 8-10" so it doesn't shift around, and then I go along with a sharpie marker and push right through the paper into the foam along the track centerline every couple of inches.

Where there is a turnout I put a series of three marks at each of the three legs of the turnout to give me a better chance of getting it lined up correctly.
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That is exactly how I did it with my small N-scale layout. XTrkCAD plan printed full size and taped together, pushpins to hold the plan to the foam, and Sharpie markers to mark key locations by pushing through the plan.

For connecting the dots, I used a 4-foot straightedge and a flexible ruler, shown below. The ruler worked well to make nice smooth curves.

- Jeff
 
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mschreuder said:
Forward Progress:

I'm not quite sure what I want to do about a backdrop on the new north shelf. I could put up a piece of 1/8" masonite like the east wall, but then I would have to work around a thermostat at the far west end of the shelf. The alternative would be to just paint the appropriate section of the drywall the same blue color and let it go at that. The thermostat is a line level style (240v) and I really don't feel like going to the bother of relocating it.
Click to expand...

Put a semi-low-relief building that can be removed, in front of it, with enough depth for it to fit inside
 
More Progress

Got a lot done over the last week or so. I decided to go ahead and extend the existing 1/8" masonite backdrop along the north wall and just cut out a hole for the thermostat that's there. The backdrop is only 14" high - I might end up wishing it was taller before I'm all done, but at this point it was easier to extend what I already had there. I can always make it taller later if I really want to, but I think this will work out OK.
 
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