Reboot Railroad...


H

Happy Curmudgeon

Member
I pretty much stopped work on my old layout last year as soon as riding weather set in, and then in November my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and that pretty much was the focus over the winter, and after a much needed vacation in the early spring after her treatment was over, it pretty much sat as I focused on the gardening and graduation pictures. In July, we bought a house back home in Fort Dodge to be closer to our parents whose health is declining, so I simply pulled up what track and scenery I could salvage and ripped the rest up and tossed in the dumpster, with a sawzall, it took a little under two hours from start to finish to destroy about 3 months work. My original plan was to build a new layout in a section of the finished basement and start after winter, but it looks like my wife beat breast cancer only to have part of the treatment cause a different form in another area and this time she won't be spared chemo so while we await the test results and to save my sanity, I decided to build the layout out in the shop, that way I can be right upstairs with my wife, and I wanted to get the bench work roughed before we start making the clinic trips etc. What I ended up building was a simple 4' X 16' table with a deck of used 3/8" CDX plywood. I'll make simple legs for it tomorrow and add some cross braces and get it set in it's spot and leveled out, but it sure provided needed therapy getting this far. Fort Dodge has CN and UP, back in the day it had a fairly impressive terminal and roundhouse, they'd always talked about preserving the terminal and turning it into a mall of sorts, thinking of trying to recreate a section of town that was railroad heavy with grain silos, a packing house and the old yard as it was on the end of that industrial section, it followed the river too so it would be a good setting I think.



20170930_233154.jpg


20170930_233141.jpg
 
Looks like a huge module there whoever your name might be.
Having a hobby while the wife is going through her treatments might be a good relief for you. When my wife was under treatment, I lost some 45 lbs. Being at her side for care and support was taking its toll on me. I didn't consider a means of unwinding.
 
D&J RailRoad said:
Looks like a huge module there whoever your name might be.
Having a hobby while the wife is going through her treatments might be a good relief for you. When my wife was under treatment, I lost some 45 lbs. Being at her side for care and support was taking its toll on me. I didn't consider a means of unwinding.
Click to expand...
I hovered during the first battle, and my wife told me that's not going to happen this time... this is probably as much for her sanity as mine.
 
wombat457 said:
As Ken said, that is one big module. What scale are you going to be using?
Click to expand...

I'll be using HO, the section of town I'm looking at with a bit of distortion/compression should fit well, on one end of the river there's an old hydro flow dam and at the other there's a low head dam that was intended to keep the water level navigable between the two and they'd run packet steamers up and down the length serving the indurties back in the day.
 
You seem to have a fairly big room to set this up in, so I assume it will have room to walk around it, i.e. not against a wall?
 
Sounds great and will be interesting to see how you model the dams and the water. As Toot'n mentioned, with the amount of room you have this is going to be a walk around layout right?
 
I'm not sure really, what I have right now is a flat table 4' X 16', an ungodly amount of flex and sectional track, a few bridges and some layout materials and a vague idea of what I want. First problem is what I want fits the real estate quite well but doesn't really allow for a continuous line without simply doing what it takes to create one with room for a maximum 22" radius at each end of the layout, which on one end takes up the space I wanted for the yard and roundhouse. However at least for the construction/frustration phase, walk around is the ticket, and I can always push it back into the corner when done. But yeah it's a big room, 24' X 24' wide open, attached to the back of a 20' X 20' two car garage. There's also a 6' round stock tank with a Red Eared Slider named Hooper in there with me.
20171001_144912.jpg
 
Welcome to the reality of the hobby ... it is all about making compromises, at least most of the time. I am trying to picture what your intentions are but from what you have said, is there any reason why you couldn't have your yard and round house, as planned, but run a "fictional" length of track up and over the yard/roundhouse? One other option might be to do your 22" radius at that end, as close to the edge of the bench work as possible (within an inch for example) and locate your yard and roundhouse inside that curve?

Just thinking aloud here ...

By the way, I saw the tank and the water setup BUT what on earth is a "Red Eared Slider"?
 
Tony, unfortunately we have those Red Eared Slider Turtles here too. They're a pest and danger to the local ones, I believe.
 
Thanks gents.

Never heard of that Turtle, here or back in Oz and am glad you like the idea of running the curve around the outside of the roundhouse and yard. Obviously, others might have better ideas you could consider as well.
 
Horseman,

Yep, that looks like what I was suggesting and the OP would only loose a few inches of "length" but still have everything he is wanting.
 
I'd put a few more supports across the 4' width. If you add some material at each end, you could go up to 24" radii.

If I was going to have a layout like that, I might look at upsizing a 4x8' layout I liked, to give me a slightly larger run. I had a layout similar to Atlas's Apex & Hypotenuse years ago, that keep things interesting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top