skipgear
New Member
I'm making a return to model railroading after about a 20 year hiatus. This was sparked by my 11 month old son's facination with trains and a trip to the local historical society. I didn't realize how much the railway had impacted our town in its early years. Where there is one line that runs through town now with a regular freight twice a day, there was once 2 intesecting double main lines (PRR and B&O), two turntables, a few industrial sidings, two passenger stations and numerous other interesting features to model in the space of a few city blocks. At it's heyday the B&O station had 40+ scheduled passenger trains.
The B&O station is still intact and the PRR line has been turned into a bike path along which many landmarks still exist. I am going to use a little creative license and use the PRR line as a C&O line for now because I have rolling stock (2-3 bay Coal Hoppers) and loco's (C&O 2-6-6-2 H5, 2-8-2 USRA Mikido) for C&O.
I'm not going for a large layout, it has to fit across the end of my office which is space that is currently taken up by some boxes so I won't really lose much space. My main concern is the grades because the plan includes two levels and the crossing meets in the middle somewhere.
Any comments are welcome. My main interest is in the building and detailing of the railroad. I am not into prototypical opperation but I want things to be period correct and have somewhat of a logical purpose. The B&O line will mainly be for passenger service while the C&O (PRR) line will be for coaling and freight. I may add a staging yard below if there is room but at this point it is not a high priority. The layout is designed for continuous running. Switching and other operations could be added later as legs to the left and right but I have too many other toys taking up space in the room at this point.
I am undecided on track as of yet. It will be Atlas 80 or 55, not sure which. I plan on using MT and Atlas accumate trucks and couplers on all. With code 55, do I need to worry about wheel flange height? Most will be flex track even though the plan shows a lot of sectional. It was just easier to layout a constant radius in the program with the sectional track. Minimum radius is 11".
attached are drawings of the layout, a picture of a simple diorama that the historical society had setup and an early map of the area, pre 1900 if I remember, before B&O had a double mainline.
The B&O station is still intact and the PRR line has been turned into a bike path along which many landmarks still exist. I am going to use a little creative license and use the PRR line as a C&O line for now because I have rolling stock (2-3 bay Coal Hoppers) and loco's (C&O 2-6-6-2 H5, 2-8-2 USRA Mikido) for C&O.
I'm not going for a large layout, it has to fit across the end of my office which is space that is currently taken up by some boxes so I won't really lose much space. My main concern is the grades because the plan includes two levels and the crossing meets in the middle somewhere.
Any comments are welcome. My main interest is in the building and detailing of the railroad. I am not into prototypical opperation but I want things to be period correct and have somewhat of a logical purpose. The B&O line will mainly be for passenger service while the C&O (PRR) line will be for coaling and freight. I may add a staging yard below if there is room but at this point it is not a high priority. The layout is designed for continuous running. Switching and other operations could be added later as legs to the left and right but I have too many other toys taking up space in the room at this point.
I am undecided on track as of yet. It will be Atlas 80 or 55, not sure which. I plan on using MT and Atlas accumate trucks and couplers on all. With code 55, do I need to worry about wheel flange height? Most will be flex track even though the plan shows a lot of sectional. It was just easier to layout a constant radius in the program with the sectional track. Minimum radius is 11".
attached are drawings of the layout, a picture of a simple diorama that the historical society had setup and an early map of the area, pre 1900 if I remember, before B&O had a double mainline.