My Milwaukee road layout


A2TwrOpr

A2TwrOpr

Member
I started a layout back in 2012 in n scale modeling the bnsf in Colorado. N scale is nice but wasn't something i was super fond of. So around December 2013 I tore up the track and everything down to the bench work and drew up plans for a new ho scale layout using the existing branch work. My goal is to model the Milwaukee road on the D&I division in the late 60s to early 70s. This will allow me to have a wide variety of power and rolling stock.
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The top photos are just a over view of the layout and track plan. I'm happy with how it's come along but actually wish I had more space for more track. That way it would take longer to operate the layout. But this was the compromise my wife and I came up since she didn't want me to use the entire basement.
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This last photo is some progress I made today. The white building is my yard office, next to it is the engine track and yard tracks, the area in the bottom of the photo will be a corn field.
 
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logandsawman said:
Nice pictures. What do you use all the elmer's for?

lasm
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It may sound odd but that's what I use to hold down my scenery materials. I paint the glue on then apply the scenery. For ballast, I lay the ballast first then use a more traditional way to glue it
 
Nice! Are you planning to run any passenger trains, if this is before Amtrak? If so, I would guess you'd use the UP (Armour yellow, Harbor mist gray) scheme. If tight curves or the length of a train is a problem, Con-Cor has some nice 72 ft. MW passenger cars.
 
The D&I-the "perfect" single track prototype for a MILW fan! Nice mix of motive power and 40 and 50 foot cars, plus your choice of the "City of Everywhere" or the Amtrak era...such as that was. The track conditions are varied; take your choice of conditions.

Enjoy building and running it!

Photoman475
 
trailrider said:
Nice! Are you planning to run any passenger trains, if this is before Amtrak? If so, I would guess you'd use the UP (Armour yellow, Harbor mist gray) scheme. If tight curves or the length of a train is a problem, Con-Cor has some nice 72 ft. MW passenger cars.
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photoman475 said:
The D&I-the "perfect" single track prototype for a MILW fan! Nice mix of motive power and 40 and 50 foot cars, plus your choice of the "City of Everywhere" or the Amtrak era...such as that was. The track conditions are varied; take your choice of conditions.

Enjoy building and running it!

Photoman475
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I've got a couple of 72' passenger cars that I actually borrowed from my brothers city train. They actually handle the curve well, which surprised me. So I may run those even tho the layout is a point to point switching type. I found 7 engines at my dads so I've got plenty of geeps and a couple f units to run plus plenty of 40' and 50' cars. I did buy a few Milwaukee Road covered hoppers that have their Americas resourceful railroad emblem. So they're a little out of my time period but I like them.
Update wise; I bought some corn stalks and painted them. Haven't done much else :/
 
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Hopefully this is a good enough photo of the tracks. I cut a few ties out of each section of flex track and then respaced them to get small gaps for the sidings and yard. And used a woodland scenics "soil" to get a kind of muddy look as if the ballast isn't all there.
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These are the Busch corn stalks that I painted. You would think that a box of 400 corn would go much further than it does! I'll need two more boxes for my corn fields.
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On top of the flat section will be a dairy farm, house, barn and windmill. I don't have any of the items for that section yet. Since summer is coming, I probably won't be doing much with the layout except running trains occasionally.
 
A2TwrOpr:

Since the MILW ran those locos into the 1970s and very early 1980s, those covered hoppers fit right in. The line you're modeling didn't change all that much until abandonment, other than the increasing effects of deferred maintenance. With the equipment you have, you can model the MILW's operations until about 1980 or so on the D&I. To model most of the 1960s, your Fs could even have the maroon stripe.

Photoman475
 
The a/b set of f units that I have are the orange, maroon, and black paint scheme. There are also my gp 30, gp 9, sd 7, two gp 20s (which are old Walthers ones), and a sd 40-2 dummy. I think that's the roster besides the gp 38 in the photo.
The layout is completely free lanced but I'm using photos of the D&I to try and come up with the feel of that line.
 
A2TwrOpr said:
Hopefully this is a good enough photo of the tracks. I cut a few ties out of each section of flex track and then respaced them to get small gaps for the sidings and yard. And used a woodland scenics "soil" to get a kind of muddy look as if the ballast isn't all there.
eme8yzav.jpg

These are the Busch corn stalks that I painted. You would think that a box of 400 corn would go much further than it does! I'll need two more boxes for my corn fields.

On top of the flat section will be a dairy farm, house, barn and windmill. I don't have any of the items for that section yet. Since summer is coming, I probably won't be doing much with the layout except running trains occasionally.
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Your layout is looking great. I discovered the same thing with the Busch corn field. I haven't painted mine yet, but I got two boxes of them and wore myself out twisting around each corn stalk so the leaves face different directions. I still need one more box, and I' still worried I won't be able to "plant" them in such a way that the bases are completely hidden. Still they look great compared to other options I've tried.
 
Jim 68cuda said:
Your layout is looking great. I discovered the same thing with the Busch corn field. I haven't painted mine yet, but I got two boxes of them and wore myself out twisting around each corn stalk so the leaves face different directions. I still need one more box, and I' still worried I won't be able to "plant" them in such a way that the bases are completely hidden. Still they look great compared to other options I've tried.
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Thanks for the compliment! I hate doing tedious things like painting that corn. It's a great product like you said, but I drove myself crazy getting these done! I'm not sure how to plant the rows either so for now the corn is just sitting on the layout with no permanent home.
 
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Nothing really spectacular progress wise but I finally finished up the grain elevator. It's a Walthers kit that I had on the layout at my parents house ( my dad, brother and I built a layout). I took it apart and repainted the entire thing to what you see now. Even got to run the local and do some switching while my daughter slept!
 
One suggestion to make painting your corn stalks easier and quicker. Don't paint the ears yellow; paint them the same color as the stalks. The tassels are a very light grey or off white and the ears would have a spot, or very short streak of, brown at the end of the ear to represent the silks in the later stage of maturation. In the early stages, the silks are green and would blend with the green of the shucks which cover the developing ears. Normally, there is not any part of the ear visible as it grows and does not turn dark yellow until it is matured. In early stages of development, the ear is more of a white color and slowly darkens as it ripens. Under normal circumstances the ear is completely covered, thus making it a lot easier to paint them.
 
By the way, it looks like things are coming along very nicely. Just think, if you had stayed with N scale you wouldn't have to worry about painting each individual stalk of corn. :)
 
Burlington Bob said:
By the way, it looks like things are coming along very nicely. Just think, if you had stayed with N scale you wouldn't have to worry about painting each individual stalk of corn. :)
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Thanks for the input about the corn stalks. Those were a pain in the butt to paint! N scale definitely has to advantages, but I had a hard time working with it. You can get a lot more detail in HO but as I'm learning, that can be too much work lol
 
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I finally got around to finishing up the dairy farm and tore up some cork that bubbled. I got the barn off eBay for a good price and the house is a woodland scenics built up building. I'm still waiting to get some people and a car or two to complete the scene. I keep changing my mind on the corn fields so that's waiting for now til I decide what to do.
 
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Everything is looking very nice but I have to agree Bob about the corn. I can confirm what he has said and can as a result of a rather large field of corn (each year) just across the way from me. Despite that though, you did a great job painting them :)
 
The farm is looking good. And thank you to Bob and Tony for confirming the color of the corn. I was kind of thinking the same thing but living in a suburban area, I wasn't certain. Most pictures or artist illustrations of corn stalks show the yellow corn exposed, yet you can still buy the corn in supermarkets with the leaves still covering the corn. I will refrain from painting the ears of corn yellow. I bought a third box of the Busch corn myself. I haven't started twisting the leaves and stalks around yet on the corn stalks in that box. You have to do the same thing when making Woodland Scenics trees, but the corn stalks are a lot smaller and all attached together in a row. That makes the twisting part more difficult and the large number of them to cover a small area makes it tedious work. A good rule of thumb for anyone using the Busch corn field is that a box full will pretty much cover about the same area as the box itself laying flat on your layout (assuming you space the rows prototypically close together). The picture on the box makes you think that you'll get a lot more coverage, but I think that several box fulls were used for the box cover photo.
 
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