Prototype Inspiration - Workshop Visit

I am lucky enough to live close by to Inveresk Railway Workshops. Inveresk was once a very large carriage shop steam and diesel servicing facility. It was closed in 1994 and over the past years has been turned int a museum.

Fortunately a large amount of the shops was saved as it was and open up to display as well as new buildings built for exhibition and art ect. The beauty of all this is it is free to visit.

Here are some pics from a recent visit.

 

FSM Jacobs Fuel CO Build

Not a lot of progress in my layout planing and construction of late. To be honest i have put a hold on a lot of it as life gets in the way and inspiration constantly changes. I have how ever been actively finishing off some neglected projects.

FSM Jacobs Fuel is a fun kit to build and makes an imposing structure. I have been working away on this one for a few years on and off. Hope it will have a place on a future layout.

 

 

Frenchman River Model Works Tug Boat Kit

Frenchman River Model Works Tug Boat Kit

I started this one a few years ago and it has sat on the display shelf. Although I don't plan a dockside scene it was a very enjoyable kit. The model itself consists of cast resin waterline hull and and cabin structure with additional metal details.

A change of name and a change of direction.

For some time I have been trying to squeeze the Yacolt branch into my 20' x 10' Layout space. No mater how I did it, there was to many compromises. I just couldn't fit the two components I wanted into my space.

With the way the exchange rate is currently locomotive power for the branch was quickly adding up to the price of a small car.

There are a number of people blogging working on either freelanced or proto freelanced layouts that I follow intently. One thing that has stuck me is i find them enjoyable and they are still able to achieve small operating sessions.

The decision has been made to start a fictitious line and utilize parts of my previous plan. The Owen Pass Lumber Company operates a short branch line through to the town of Owen Pass and then heads off into the woods with various logging operation.

Minimum radius 24" on main and 20" on the upper "Y".
All turnouts No.6 Hand Laid
Max Grade 2%

The upper deck plan is very similar to my yacolt plan.
Town of Owen Pass consists of a Depot, Team Track, Car Repair Shop, Boiler / Welding shop, Furniture manufacture. The Mill area consists of a Mill, Log Dump and car storage tracks. There is a 3 track travereser above the helix to stage log trains on.

 

The lower deck has changed completely and is reached heading clockwise down the helix for 3 turns. There is scope to reduce this to 2 turns and continue the grade all the way through to Owen Pass. The point to the logging staging will need to be altered though. 

Coming out of the helix you enter the main town on what could be called the Middle Deck. Unnamed as yet this will include the lumber companies loco service shop and equipment sidings as well as some small industry.

A long run along a narrow shelf that sites 200mm above the lower deck through to a small town consisting of a run around  and 2 sidings. Possibly an oil dealer and team siding. 

From here you enter a dramatic scene with the main crossing itself and a gorge below then through a single turn helix and running parallel to the river gorge. A total of 200mm fall down to the lower deck. A short tunnel for a view break between the two.

Another large trestle to cross before the interlocked crossing of the NP main and into the interchange yard at the lowest point. This Yard will be built as a Freemo TOMA Module that can be removed.

I think this plan will offer me more variety then the single track mainline of the Yacolt branch.

Minimum 2 train lengths between towns has been achieved. Reduce hidden track from my original plans.

Demand Based Car Flow - Model Fleet Part 3 - Breaking it down into Roads

In Model Railroad Hobbyist, for March 2015 Tony Thompson wrote an excellent article highlighting the cars owned by various roads at particular times. Although the data he used later then my prototype era of choice (Tony's data represented 1950) I felt if could still be used as a basis to model my fleet on.

I started with my previous Determination of 50 cars required to run my layout (excluding logging and passenger equipment) and started to break this down.  There are various schools of thought or rules of thumb when determining the number of home road and foreign cars on a layout. I decided to start with a 40-60 split and figured that the logging fleet would probably balance it out closer to 50-50.

With a 40-60 Split I would need 20 home road cars (I will address this in a separate post) and 30 foreign road cars. Based on the article of Tony's you could break this 30 down into particular roads using the fleet size that each particular road had at the time being. There is a graph on his blog here that represents this Modeling the SP. The result of this would result in the fleet being slewed towards PRR and NYC.

I felt that the location of the Yacolt branch would see more traffic from roads in direct interchange such as SP, SP&S, GN, ATSF so I adjusted my car fleet to represent more of these but also kept in mind the high number of cars owned by PRR

The Main Roads

SP  Southern Pacific - 5 cars

ATSF Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe - 4 cars

SP&S Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway - 3 cars
GN Great Nortehrn - 2 cars
PRR Pennsylvania Railroad - 3 cars
NYC New York Central - 2 cars
PFE - Pacific Fruit Express - 2 car

Total 21 cars Leaving room for 9 from smaller roads that I would like to represent but not limited to,

B&O, MP, CNW, B&O, SR, UP, CP, SOO, NKP

This brings the number of non home road cars up to 30. The next challenge is breaking it down to percentage of car types required across the layout but it is likely the majority will be XM class.

Building A Freight Car Fleet - Resources

I have been using various resources in determining my car fleet. Three blogs that have been a fantastic help with wealth of knowledge and examples on setting up a fleet are,

http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com.au/
https://yosemitevalleyrailroad.wordpress.com/
http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/

Demand Based Car Flow - Model Fleet Part 2 - The Total Number

A few weeks ago I used a demand based car flow system to begin  determining my freight car fleet. The exercise highlighted that daily trains departing staging would consist of 6 or 7 car lengths.

I plan to run my layout on my own most of the time and want to be able to enter the shed and run a train. To start out I envisage 3 trains daily crossing the layout, local freight, passenger and dedicated log train, with the the options of adding an extra freight when I have 2 operators.

This would mean I need the option to have staging for 4 trains at Vancouver end of the layout and also 2 free tracks to run around and somewhere to turn locomotives. i haven't determined if i will use a traverse table with 6 tracks and a turntable at the end or just s standard staging yard.

Using the demand based car flow from my earlier post it shows 6-7 cars entering the layout on any given day. At the same time these cars will be spotted at various locations from he previous day s you can assume there will be 6-7 cars being loaded or unloaded on the layout. I also plan my waybills to have cars sitting to be loaded for more then one day in some cases so you could make the assumption that there would be 10 cars on the layout most of the time.

The above scenario results in 24 cars being required on the layout at any given time.

Staging 1 - Local freight 1- up to 7 cars
Staging 2 - Local freight 2 - up to 7 cars
On Layout - Up to 10 Cars

I want to run a variety of freight cars across the layout and not use the same 24 cars each session. When making up a train in staging i plan to use the demand based table and the process to be something similar to

- Look up Demand based Table for day of month (table needs to be extended to cover full 31 days.
- Table determines what cars are required by shippers and local agents.
- Make up train using a mixture of freight already in staging yard and from car draws below.
- Add Waybills to the car card pockets. and stage train ready for departure.
- There should already be 1 train in staging ready so this train will become the next operating sessions local freight.

Wanting a mixture of fleet to reduce seeing the same freight on the layout each time have double the figure of 24 cars to 48 and then rounded it out to 50 in total.

This figure of 50 doesn't include cars specifically for Murphy Lumber Co and also the logging fleet and it is likely this will bring the number up to approximately 70 cars in total.

 Next up its time to break down those 50 cars into different roads and home road cars that accurately represent 1929.