STEAM is the answer!!!


SNE

SNE

Member
Hi everyone! I've always been a modern day modeler. Being 39 years old I've never seen live steam so I've never been interested by it. While looking for inspiration for a new layout I keep finding myself wanting to model my hometown railroad that never was completed, the Southern New England railroad. I grew up in Sturbridge MA, right near the old roadbed. It's funny because only a few short years ago I discovered that it was supposed to be a railroad...I've been obsessed with it ever since, doing many field trips and and field research. I've always wanted to model the line between Brimfield MA, into Fiskdale MA in a modern day setting. However it just never seemed right, to many what ifs and not enough for operations, mainly through freights to Providence and back to Palmer MA...so it never turned into a layout...just day dreams!

I was watching a WW2 movie the other night, admiring our "greatest generation" like always, and it hit me.......STEAM!!!!!! To be more specific, Late November/ early December 1942. This would provide the traffic I desire, and would incorporate my favorite railroad and the generation I admire the most!!!
The only problem...... I know NOTHING about steam!!!!! Sure I've read about people's steam era layouts, but a milk train?? Ice houses? LOL!! So I figured I'd start this thread to get a good discussion going about steam operations, freight traffic, and passenger traffic!
My plan is to eventually build the real layout in Ho scale in a 10 x 16 room, but for now I'm going to build a small shelf layout to get my feet wet in steam. I'll post up a track plan as we move along.
For now let's talk about a small town situation, a spur running 2 miles to a town off a mainline and terminating there. What type of traffic would it generate? I'm thinking for starters a small station and freight depot...what else? I assume I'll need a turntable to turn the engine around? Or would the engine back up/ push 2 miles?
Would a coal dealer/trestle be appropriate?

I have many questions, looking forward to discussing and sharing this with everyone!!

Joe


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SNE said:
The only problem...... I know NOTHING about steam!!!!! Sure I've read about people's steam era layouts, but a milk train?? Ice houses? LOL!! So I figured I'd start this thread to get a good discussion going about steam operations, freight traffic, and passenger traffic!
My plan is to eventually build the real layout in Ho scale in a 10 x 16 room, but for now I'm going to build a small shelf layout to get my feet wet in steam. I'll post up a track plan as we move along.
For now let's talk about a small town situation, a spur running 2 miles to a town off a mainline and terminating there. What type of traffic would it generate? I'm thinking for starters a small station and freight depot...what else? I assume I'll need a turntable to turn the engine around? Or would the engine back up/ push 2 miles?
Would a coal dealer/trestle be appropriate?
Click to expand...
For the spur you might want to research other short lines as well, such as the Belfast & Moosehead Lake, Louisville & Wadley etc., and other well documented branches such as the D&RGW Monarch branch. Operations are going to be similar. I think you will find an example of all the options you are talking about, turntables, wyes, and backing.

Ice reefer services lasted until 1972. In 1963 my father came home from the packing plant put us all in the car and went 35 miles back to the plant just so he could show us a freight car that had a refrigeration unit built in and didn't need ice.

Small towns often had the passenger and freight stations combined into one building.

I would say not a coal dealer specifically but a fuel dealer selling not only coal but wood, oil, kerosene, heating oil, gasoline, etc.
 
The local railroad in my town is as you described. Except 4.5 miles long. They don't turn the steam locomotives. They can run backwards up to 30-40 mph. A coal dealer was very common during that time period. Other things depend on the location. Farm country had feed and seed dealers, grain elevators, implement dealers. Every small town had a team track for miscellaneous shipments. The city would have more team tracks and larger industries possibly needing serviced multiple times a day.
Common railroad practice was Time Table and Train Order, (TT&TO). That is whole subject in itself. A small town branch could be on the time table of a large railroad or switched when ever the crew got there if a shortline.

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Lumber, furniture on a large industrial scale, alcohol from a distillery, grains, produce, coal, paints from a factory, rugs from a loom mill, car parts, locomotive parts, truck parts, farm implements, draperies, telephone/utility/power poles (timber or metal lattice), soup tins (full and new-empties),...the list is limited only by your imagination. If it could be moved more cheaply in a covered hopper, an open hopper, on a flat car, as a trailer on a flat car, in a tanker, or in a box car....that's how successful businesses moved their products.

Steam locomotives on short lines may have moved rather quickly if their lines were somewhat level, had few tight curves, and there were no flag stops or intermediate stops at depots or drop points/other industries. In that case, a leading or engine truck would have been necessary, and the chances are excellent that your railroad would have acquired at least one 2-8-0 Consolidation. The 2 means it had one leading axle on a truck meant to help guide the locomotive around curves at higher speeds than a simple non-trucked 0-8-0 switcher would have done safely. Consolidations typically ran from between 60- 130 tons, with the IC having among the largest.
 
My favourite book with shortline trains is Mixed Train Daily by Lucius Beebe and Howell North books....love it!

Mixed Train Daily.jpg
 
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Sound equipped by the way is the answer to the question you didn't ask. I switched back to HO now that the sound units are awesome. Especially for a small operation hearing the appropriate sounds reminds you that the brakemen can only run so fast to work the switches. Hearing the Johnson bar switch between forward and reverse reminds you to imagine a large machine rather than a toy slammed back and forth.

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Wow awesome responses everyone thank you!!! This is the type of info I was looking for!!


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Selector said:
..... The 2 means it had one leading axle on a truck meant to help guide the locomotive around curves at higher speeds than a simple non-trucked 0-8-0 switcher would have done safely.
Click to expand...

Does that also apply in HO? A future project requires an 0-4-0 running at TGV scale speeds. Is that going to be a challenge?
 
Cletus said:
Does that also apply in HO? A future project requires an 0-4-0 running at TGV scale speeds. Is that going to be a challenge?
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Cletus, no, it doesn't apply on our models. In the real world of steam, the two trucks had a centering device that, when the truck was being forced to one side by the wheels' flanges making contact with the outer rail on a curve, there was a countering force at the pivot point forcing the nose of the locomotive to the same side. The truck wanted to be centered and the only way to do that was to force its pivot point into the curve...exactly what the engineering designers wanted to happen. Our models don't really have either the need or the capability because they don't have centering springs...at least, none of my various steamers has them.
 
Thanks. You saved from a great agony of worry.

A related thought: do superelevated curves reduce the curve radius required for reliable operation?
 
When in Foster care i went up to back of the property. There i saw a set of tracks. In the country? No industry? It took me a few years of exploring to find out what it was for. The main line was a back door track to two places. One went to a Navy Boot-camp and was no longer used and hadn't for a long time. The other went to the then Susquehanna rr. Not there anymore but there rr connected with Pennsylvania R.R. Not a lot of info out there Was even less when i was there. Took months to figure out what the little shortline was that went behind the farm. Was no longer used and was left abandoned with track in place.It came from someplace up in Pennsylvania. Most of the folks hadn't seen the trains there in years and most said it was never used after WW2. In the 1980's they finally removed the track off the shortline but left the tracks for the navy base. All the bridges had been taken out before i started looking into the rr. It was steam at the time of use. Nothing to back it up but the trains were most likely used for troop trains out of boot camp. I ought to go on-line and see if i can find out anything about it. Maybe one of these days.
 
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Cletus said:
Thanks. You saved from a great agony of worry.

A related thought: do superelevated curves reduce the curve radius required for reliable operation?
Click to expand...

it has the effect of widening the radius (not really) but the equipment is kinda doing a minor loop da loop, the purpose is you can run faster thru a curve because you lean evrything to the inner and your not throwing weight outside because of spin inertia.
 
Cletus said:
Thanks. You saved from a great agony of worry.

A related thought: do superelevated curves reduce the curve radius required for reliable operation?
Click to expand...

No, they have no salutary effect in our models unless we can get our models to run about 160 scale mph....or more. On the prototype, however, there is very much a salutary effect, and that is to control the effects of a high centre of gravity on trains. While automobiles have wide stances relative to their body height and centre of gravity, trains ride tall on frames just above a narrow gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches. Just as your NASCAR ovals have heavily canted curves, so trains at speed need to protect standing passengers from being slammed into the walls as the train runs at limited speed around curves. Between the eased curves and super-elevation, passengers can stand and walk unhindered inside passenger cars as the trains rush along.

If you wish to enjoy a salutary effect from one of the two engineered accommodations on tracks, either super-elevation or easements, take the easements. They actually do help long rolling stock items, especially long passenger cars in the 79-85' lengths with diaphragms, to get around curves on our model layouts. Super-elevation doesn't scale, just like running water and smoke. But, if you are going to take images of your trains on your layout, super-elevation is the cat's pj's.

alleghenynumber2res.png
 
While there's a discussion about superelevation. Should you be tempted into a 2 or more level layout, using a helix to access the level/s, then superelevation can play an active role with model trains, particularly if you're a lover of long trains. Even model rolling stock can have quite a bit of combined weight, so, in the case of a helix with both an up and down track, negative s/elevation (leaning outward) on the UP track and positive on the DOWN track (leaning inward) can help to avoid cars being pulled off, into the center on the UP run, or pushed off the outside on the DOWN run. If the helix is single track, used for both directions, then a flat elevation is the only compromise.
 
Just to clarify how steam locomotives are designated (each railroad use different systems for designating the class of each of their locomotives): The Wyte system of designating wheel arrangements list the number of wheels on each group. For example: a 2-6-0 has two wheels (on one axle) on the lead (sometimes called a "pony" truck. It would have 6 driving wheels, 2 to each axle; and NO trailing truck wheels at all. That particular wheel arrangement is known as a Mogul type, as these were some of the first freight locos developed during era of the railroad moguls in the 1870's and '80's. A 4-6-0 was known as simply a "Ten Wheeler". As locomotives grew and had bigger fireboxes, it became desirable to support it with a trailing truck. The Ten Wheeler, with a two-wheel trailing truck behind the drivers, is designated as a 4-6-2, also called a Pacific type. I the case where longer and longer boilers were built, it became necessary to place more than one set of drivers under the boiler. In most of these, the front "engine" pivoted to allow the longer wheelbase to negotiate curves. An example of this type, called an "articulated" would be the "4-6+6-4" built for the UP, called a "Challenger". Each set of drivers had its own set of cylinders. The Challenger's cylinders all operated at the same pressure, which is known as a "simple" articulated. If the steam system had a pair of smaller, high pressure cylinders for one set of driving wheels and a lower pressure set for the other drivers, where the high pressure steam was reduced as it went to the other set of cylinders, it was known as a "compound" or sometimes as a Mallet (pronounced Malley...after the French engineer who designed it.) I'd suggest you get a copy of "How a Steam Locomotive Works". The longer fixed wheelbased (more drivers) engines have more difficulty negotiating sharp curves. This is especially true of our models. To get around this, both prototype and model steamers resort to one of two methods to make it easier to get around sharper curves. One is to remove the flanges from some of the middle driving wheels, allowing them to slide over the tops of the rails as the train goes into and out of the curve. The other is to have the frame narrower and allow sideplay in the driver sets. Real railroads usually limited the number of drivers for branch lines, both because of generally sharper curves, and because they used lighter rails, and had to limit the load on the rails. Hope this is of some interest and help.

Happy Holidays!
 
Watch some Steam locomotive videos on YouTube. Strasburg RR in Lancaster PA has a former N&W 4-8-0 they run in both directions. It was a classic early 1900's era loco which worked on the N&W until the early 1950's. While this exact loco may not be what you need it will give you an idea of smaller steam operations.
 
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