Site Reset

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site and it’s time to basically start fresh with my updated thoughts on what I want to do. I have just returned from the NMRA 2009 Convention in Hartford where I met a lot of great people and picked up some good ideas from the layouts I saw.

New Years Resolution (Model Railroad Related)

I resolve to spend at minimum 10 hours working on things that will lead towards the successful creation and operation of my Reading Company Layout.

I also resolve to post a weekly wrap up of the activities that I have done which lead me towards the goal.

New Year 2009

Happy New Year to everyone out there which has been visiting my slow attempts at getting my layout built.

I have worked out a schedule that I plan to keep up in order to get something built up and running this year.

Here is the new planned schedule:

End of January – Finish Layout Plan, get reviews and improvements, and clean out and organize the junk that’s in the layout space.

February – Build the walls and wire the layout space.  Also install some sort of flooring system, maybe carpet or foam panels

March to June -Benchwork construction, and track work in some areas.

NMRA 2008 Convention Photos

I’ve dumped all of the photos I took in Anaheim up to my Google Picassa account here.

Getting Back on Track

Yes it’s been almost another month since my last post, I’ve been busy at work catching up with everything that I missed during the time that I was out for the NMRA convention and then my other travels since then.  I’m planning on spending most of my time this upcoming holiday weekend working on railroad related items, I’ve got a lot of stuff which I purchased in Anaheim to organize and figure out what needs to be done with it to get it ready.

On the track planning side of things, I’ve got a good idea of what i want to put in my Hershey track plan, I’ll be uploading that before the end of the weekend, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the Lebanon area of the layout since that’s what I need to look at planning out next.  I’ve never really seen a good yard diagram of the yard west of Lebanon, but I know it supported the local trains that ran along the line plus interchanging with the Pennsylvania Railroad and Cornwall Railroad (until 1964).

The other important item that I’ve been looking at is staging,  I’ve never liked any of my staging plans for the double deck layout that I am planning on building.  Because of the space that I’ve been looking at it was most likely that both of the yards would end up being stub ended yards, difficult to re-stage and almost impossible to just run a train non-stop when needed.  On the LDSIG tour in Anaheim I saw Bruce Morden’s HO scale Southern Pacific Santa Barbara Subdivision. Bruce is using the concept of X-factor staging which had first been mentioned in Model Railroad Planning 2004.  The idea is that the staging is arranged so that you can back a train into the staging once it has completed it’s run across the layout without interfering with the main line.  I’ll have to see if I can dig up a photo of what Bruce has there since I’ve been thinking about putting that into my plan to see how it fits.

Back from the Convention

Yes I’ve been back a week, but catching up with a lot of stuff at work as well as having to be out of town on business for part of the week has meant that I haven’t been able to update here as much as I wanted or will be able to do so in the future.

The NMRA convention was great, a number of interesting clinics, great layouts to visit and operate on.  I’ve picked up some good ideas that I want to look at including in my layout plan which will be posted soon.  I’ve been updating the Model Rail Cast forums with various details about the National Train Show, and will be dumping all of my photos there for everyone to view.

Other than that, I’m pretty close to meeting my timeline, I’ve got most of my thoughts on my layout design in my head, now I just need to get them down on paper, post them here, on the Model Rail Cast forums, as well as the LDSIG Wiki to get feedback from the plans and then start building.

Quick Update

Been a little too long since I’ve posted anything here so I figured I would give a quick update as to the status of my efforts.  I am still working on creating layout plans and operational schemes that I can get feedback on at the NMRA convention next week.

I’ve been starting with looking at the staging requirements for my layout under a couple various operation session plans

Plan 1 – 24 hour Operation Scheme
Plan 2 – 12 hour Operation Scheme, breaking the day into two segments
Plan 3 – 8 hour Operation Scheme

My overall goal is to create an operating session of approxiamelty 3 hours, so each of the plans would use a fast clock of some ratio.  There were a total of 18 scheduled Freight Trains (10 Westbound, 8 Eastbound) down the line during the time period which I am looking at, 9 of which made stops along the route.  And then there were the numerous local trains that transited parts of the line all adding up to a very busy stretch of railroad.

Layout Design Element: Hershey, PA

Layout Design Elements are a concept that was first introduced by Tony Koester in the Model Railroad Planning 1995 publication. Layout Design Elements (LDE’s) are usually created by taking a look at a section of the prototype railroad, figuring out how it was physically constructed and actual operated. Then using that knowledge create a modeled representative which has the same look at operational interest as the full size railroad in a smaller space.

As I had mentioned in an earlier post here one of the focused areas for my layout is going to be the Hershey Chocolate Factory and the supporting rail yards. There are actually two main areas of operational interest for the railroad during the time period that I am modeling, the first is a small three track yard at a location named “Derry” on the Conrail ZTS maps. These yards are located approximately one half mile east of the main plant. The second is the main chocolate factory which has a number of spurs into the factory itself south of the main lines plus two sidings into the bean unloading area north of the main.

Based on a 1964 edition of the Reading Freight Schedule Book, there were a total of six symbol freight trains that stopped at the yard near Hershey, three set out cars, and three picked up cars. There was also a local which started each day at 6am which serviced the plant, plus a local at 2pm from Hershey as well as a 2:15pm local from Lebanon (located 16 miles east) which would service the other industries in town.

Doing some quick math and based on the expected length of sidings and such at the plant, I am looking to make the Derry portion of the LDE roughly 12 feet long, which should enable the shortest yard track to hold approximately 8 cars.  Additionally at the location there are a total of 5 tracks, from north to south they are the yard/silo lead, main line track 1, main line track 2, storage track #4, and the yard storage/plant lead.  I’ve looked at the possibility of removing one of the tracks, but for now the plan is to include all of them as per the prototype.

At the Chocolate Factory area, there is the coco bean storage silos located on the north side of the tracks, there are two silo tracks each of which hold the boxcars full of beans being unloaded.  At the plant itself there are five spurs which lead into the plant and one that goes near the power plant. I am not sure of the status of the on site power generation for Hershey’s Factory but the iconic Smoke Stacks are a must include in the model.   The majority of the plant will be represented as an aisle side industry with building flats on the aisle to symbolize the complex plant structure which is much to large to model.  The various spurs into the plant will allow for either one or two cars spots for the switcher to work.

I am still working with XtrackCad to layout some track plans for the area and will post them here when I feel I have something that is workable

Layout Space and Timeline

Layout Space

My layout is going to be located in an currently unfinished basement, total dimensions are 33′ x 26′.  Currently most of the basement is being used for storage, the plan is to set aside an area of around 22′ x 26′ for the layout and then leave the rest for the storage, workshop and heating/cooling systems.

I figured that it would be easiest to have the layout area right as you descend the steps from upstairs and then seperate the other areas with a wall and door near the support post.  The  two drawbacks to that are having to leave a straight aisle between the steps and door and creating some sort of removal area for when the door needs to be used.

Here is a simple plan of my total space available

I am still working on putting the proposed benchwork down into that layout space and I’ll post that soon.

Timeline

As I mentioned above, the basement is currently unfinished space, poured concrete walls and floors, with a lot of storage (junk) taking up most of the area.  My overall layout timeline is as follows

Now – Mid July – Clean up/organize stuff in the basement, finish up preliminary track plans for benchwork/electrical

July 11th – 20th – NMRA National Convention in Anaheim CA – Show off my plans to people there for feedback and suggestions

End July – End September – Build out space with electrical/heating/cooling/drywall/flooring

October – End of Year – Start working on Benchwork for layout.  Will start with building one level of the layout with an additional one to be added later on.

Jan 09 – March 09 – Continue work on Benchwork/electrical/track work.

Apr 09 – July 09 – Finish track/electrical work on one level of layout.   Try and run Operating session or two on finished sections.

So that’s what I’m looking at trying to accomplish for the next year, again I’ll take any comments or suggestions anyone has.

My Modeling Focus

I am looking a modeling a section on the Reading Lines between Harrisburg and Reading PA. This section of the system was known as the Lebanon Valley Line, and is shown highlighted on the map below (click to view larger).

The total length of the Branch between Reading and Harrisburg was around 53 miles, but located to the East of Harrisburg (6 miles) was Rutherford Yard, a very large and complex Hump yard which is much too large to attempt to model. On the eastern end of the branch the trackage between Reading and Sinking Springs (5.7 miles) was also used by the Reading and Columbia Branch, so I have been focusing on the area between Sinking Springs and Hummelstown which is located appx. 3 miles East of Rutherford.

Using selective compression, I’m looking and including 10 of the 17 towns on the branch. The Reading produced a guide in 1954 called the Freight Shippers Guide which lists which companies where located in each of the towns, if they had a private siding or used the team track and what products they worked with. This guide has been very influential in guiding my decisions on what to model. The towns that I plan to put on the layout are Wernersville, Robesonia, Sheridan, Myerstown, Lebanon, Annville, Palmyra, Hershey, Swatara, and Hummelstown.

I will be putting up a post on each of them and detailing my plans for each of them shortly.