Very refreshing to see a finely done layout that is not 1. An eastern coal road. 2. A Pacific Northwest logging railroad. 3. The Colorado marrow gauge. 4. The PRR, NYC or Santa Fe.
Nothing wrong with any of the above other than being , shall we say, overdone. This layout is niche modeling at its best!
https://www.modelrailroadacademy.com/video/touring-florida-east-coast-key-west-extension-014619/#
That was a nice change of pace. Very, very well-done railroad. Some real love and talent went into that.
Is that the same Allen Keller Productions from the 70s and early 80s? I used to watch those old videos all the time.
Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Jonathan
It seems to be. Don't know if Allen Keller is even alive anymore.
That 'Seven Mile Bridge' was interesting. Seemed to be a lot of track workers living along the line. Must be a lot of washouts after storms come through.
Len
That line was washed away and abandoned in 1936. In those days section gangs had to visually inspect all spikes and rail joints at every 39', tightening things up as required. Each section was pretty short, just a few miles, but in this case the track crews "had" to live on the islands because daily ferrying to the mainland was prohibitive.
Wow, thank you for showing me this. I was getting verrrrry tired of all of this mountain/coal/logging layouts I've been seeing. Thanks again for this!
Quote from: #athomehobbyist on May 10, 2020, 09:31:39 PM
Wow, thank you for showing me this. I was getting verrrrry tired of all of this mountain/coal/logging layouts I've been seeing. Thanks again for this!
Just wondering how one EVER gets tired of mountain railroads. If you've ever seen a real one in person you'd be hooked for life.
Reminds me of the old adage......those who can, do......those who can't, complain about those that can".
I have seen as many poorly done "flatland" layouts as I have "mountain" ones.
Sid
The poorest ones are flatland layouts, no doubt. Basic grass mat scenery, track right on top of it, etc. but I've seen layouts in magazines whose rock cliffs look like someone dragged a hairbrush through wet plaster..... which they probably did.
All that really matters is if the modeler is happy with his layout. My own flatland layout is very average at best and would never make it into the magazines. I was very happy with it for a long time, but after seeing the layouts I posted links to, my satisfaction is waning. Time for a re-do. How many of y'all have finished a layout and then started over again to fix all the stuff you weren't satisfied with.
I worked in both West Virginia and Colorado, saw the B&O and the N&W, and I'm still modeling coastal plains.
I live in Oklahoma y'all. i haven't seen no mountain railroads lol.
I've never finished a layout because I always change my mind before I get that far. :-[
KCS in southeastern OK. BNSF south of Davis. All of Ok. is not flat.
RAM,
this is true. However, I live in Owasso, kinda Northeast of Tulsa, which is way up in the Northeastern Quadrant of our great state. For the most part, we get mile-mile1/2 long coal and intermodal trains. We get intermodal because of the Port of Catoosa on the Arkansas River. We have small mountains (mainly large hills) but there are no tracks up there.
Quote from: Trainman203 on May 11, 2020, 09:17:23 PM
I worked in both West Virginia and Colorado, saw the B&O and the N&W, and I'm still modeling coastal plains.
B&O in West Virginia. Coal trains powered by whatever Grafton had laying around, with 4 sd35s pushing on the rear. Up to Tunnelton at a crawl, then the descent to Rowlesburg in a cloud of brakeshoe smoke. And then the REAL show begins. Cranberry..... a dozen miles of S curves and 1200 feet in elevation gain. YOU can't get a run for it because of the curves. So you pull the throttle all the way out and hope for the best. If you're lucky, 2 hours later you stagger over the top at Terra Alta, drop the helper and take a well deserved breather as you cross the Glades to Altamont. Then, the precipitous drop down Seventeen Mile to Keyser. Set the air and ride the dynamics the whole way down. TOo much air and you stall the train on the flat spot at Swanton. Too little air and she gets away from you. Guaranteed if that happens you won't make it to the bottom. Rolling into Keyser in another cloud of brakeshoe smoke.
THat's mountain railroading. THE mountain railroad. The original mountain railroad, for B&O reached Wheeling and the Ohio RIver from Baltimore in 1952, 2 years before the Pennsy reached Pittsburgh. THat's the railroad that seperates the men from the boys, the one that has contributed so much to locomotive development over the years because of the combination of heavy coal trains, steep grades and sharp curves.
If you could witness THAT, and not be a fan of mountain railroading, there's no hope for you.
It's not a question of being a fan of anything or not. It's a statement that some layout themes like eastern mountain coal roads or the Colorado narrow gauge are quite simply overdone . And some people like Quentin and I would like to see something else now and then.
I'm a big fan of the late great Saluda Grade on the Southern, that's as fine an example of mountain railroading as anything on the PRR or the B&O, but how many layouts feature Saluda? Or the KCS in the Ozarks? Or the Hiwassee Loop? Or the Rathole Division? Or some narrow gauge besides those in Colorado? There were dozens of not hundreds at one time. I'm thrilled to see the FEC modeled at all, especially the steam era, and the models of ag branches through flat country demeaned by many but what constantly tugs at me to, like the salmon, return home to the familiar.
Personally, I've always thought the Belgrano Cargas west of Salta, or the Central Andino would make good prototypes is suitable models were available. But there are very few models available of export Alco or EMD units.
Other possible ideas would be Santa Fe's Crown King branch, or Western Maryland in Blackwater Canyon.
For us modellers, mountain railroading allows us to reasonably get more railroad in a given space. you can loop your tracks back on themselves and model bridges and tunnels. A flat railroad only exists in two dimensions, a mountain railroad exists in three. One of the tragedies of this hobby is that the so-called "experts" that publish the magazines are flatlanders who tell you railroads crossing over and under each other in narrow valleys is unrealistic. Apparently they've never visited Pennsylvania, where we have an entire state full of places like that.
I worked jobs in West Virginia and Colorado, and traveled through western Pennsylvania, and saw the railroads in those places, so I've seen the things you speak of, Jeffrey. But I just didn't feel the magic there that you do. I didn't stay there because mountains make me claustrophobic, they literally give me the willies, I need to be able to see horizons and distance. I love seeing a steam train from miles away but hearing the whistle float in on the wind. I saw it in Arizona in 1965, standing on top of a water tank watching the Magma Arizona slowly fade into the horizon. You'd see the steam rise up from the distant engine and then after a very long moment hear that moaning 5-chime scream softly float in and out on the eternal wind; sometime very clear then fading away.... like steam itself was back then. It was beyond heartbreaking. And as a child I heard that same sound from our home on hot summer afternoons, goes back a long long way with me.
My take only .... the magic of open country and distant horizons can't be had with hills. And it is really hard to imply distant horizons on a layout. I haven't done it yet as much as I want to.
Other mountain railroads you never see modeled are Raton Pass or the GN/NP/MILW over the Cascade Range, especially the earlier as-built with switchbacks on the mainline. Who the heck models switchbacks on a Class 1? What a great way to get to a second layout level without a helix, and create a lot of travel time too.
Or the CP/CN over the Canadian Rockies. I don't know much about them but seems like I remember one of them having a complete ascending loop inside a tunnel , what a way to make a helix prototypical.
The criticism of layouts looping over each other I believe was directed st the same line crossing over itself, although the Hiwassee Loop in Tennessee does exactly that, crossing itself on a pile trestle at that. I'd post a photo if I could.
Rode the Central Andino in 2000, a Class 1, with 20 some switchbacks, short train's 8 cars if I remember
no caboose, (just dead weight) more tunnel's and bridges then any model RR layout would ever have. At the
time most motive power was MLW (Alco) DL 535 ? both standard and narrow gauge on the H&H Rly, which has since
been rebuilt to standard gauge.
Ken Clark
GWN
Now i'm jealous.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Yyti9K9cg
I can tell this (part 1) might convert me.
Saved the video's for later today, when there is nothing on the TV worth turning it on ;D
What I did watch brought back memories of the trip. Looking forward to watching both part's.
Ken Clark
GWN
Here's some vacation video I took from around Raton, New Mexico from 2001. The last part of it has the train snaking it way through. I'm an "off the beaten path" kind of guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXfsXB6-5PM&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXfsXB6-5PM&feature=youtu.be)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSJXIGaOdZE
Here is the legendary Cranberry Grade on the former B&O about 1996. The first scene is at Ambersburg, WV. Only a mile or so from the bottom and already the train is down to walking speed. Second scene is about 9 miles up the mountain. Final scene is coming over the top at Terra Alta. And yes, it really DOES look like that. Enjoy.
Thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nErcIvhsUw
Riding the dynamic brake through the switchbacks on Belgrano Cargas. Track is meter guage, and the logomotive is a narrow guage export version of the SD39.
Here are a couple of videos of the Spiral Tunnels. One is a good scenic view and the other offers a good explanation of how it is designed.
Sid
https://youtu.be/Gz8BhGUA7ok (https://youtu.be/Gz8BhGUA7ok)
https://youtu.be/Sxwxw_xAIAI (https://youtu.be/Sxwxw_xAIAI)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ6eoaEcGvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3EMYxJXQg0
And here is the essence of West Virginia railroading as modelled in HO scale.
Very beautiful model, just one question: does it simulate a real tour?
Not sure what you mean by real tour. That is my Dad's layout. It is handlaid code 83 on the main and code 70 on the siding. I helped lay this track about 40 years ago and it's still in operation. Up until this virus thing he held operating sessions once a week. The layout is run just like the real thing, with timetable and train order rules. Under normal operations, the head end and helper locomotives have separate crews who must coordinate to get the train to the top of the mountain. Once there, the helper will cut off and duck into a pocket track to await another train. It will then return to the bottom of the mountain to meet the train it is to assist.
The railroad itself has 3 main terminals, with a central junction where all the lines converge and this introduces some interesting problems. Locomotives tend to accumulate where they are not needed, and excess power must be added to trains to get them where they are useful. That is the case with the 4 unit consist on the empty coal train. Another problem is that traffic tends to all converge on one spot at the same time, and the dispatcher has his hands full trying to get everything sorted out.
We hear about Horseshoe Curve and the Tehachapi Loop until we are blue in the face. But no one ever talks about this, which is just as cool. Probably because in the south there isn't a railfan every 10' like in the northeast or California.
https://thetunneldiaries.com/tag/hiwassee-loop/
I've been to the museum but I don't think we took the train ride. If I remember, we stopped there on the way to Florida one year and didn't spend a whole lot of time there. $42 for a coach ride and $93 for a dome ride.
https://www.tvrail.com/events-exhibits/rides/hiwassee-loop (https://www.tvrail.com/events-exhibits/rides/hiwassee-loop)
The best thing about the Hiwassee Loop is that it looks like something on a layout! I remember seeing an American Flyer layout with track spiraling around and up a mountain, just like at Hiwassee!
The Great Smoky Mountain Railroad is a few miles to the east in North Carolina. It has a steam engine about half the time and is less than half the cost. But the scenery is half as exciting. It's almost entire paralleling rivers down in valleys.
East of Asheville in North Carolina are two railroads worthy of mention. The Southern headed west out of Old Fort up the Blue Ridge front through a series of loops and Horseshoe curves gaining about 1000 feet in elevation. The railroad loops around for seven miles in the space of about a mile and a half, and in some places three different levels of railroad are visible at once. There are seven tunnels on the way to the summit, one below the loops, and six above. There is one spot where you can stand with your back to one tunnel, look through a second and watching a train coming towards you out of a third.
Just a short distance to the northeast, Clinchfield climbed the same mountains using its own loops. They weren't as convoluted as SOuthern's, but they more than made up for it in the sheer number of tunnels, about 20, on the climb to the top.
But the most spectacular of all existed just north of the Southern where the narrow guage Mt Mitchell railroad climbed its namesake mountain on a sustained 5% grade through several sets of switchbacks. The railroad topped out at almost 6000 feet in elevavtion, about 3500 feet above its connection to the Southern near Black Mountain. Its terminus at Camp Alice was about 5700 feet above sea level.
I'd love to do that Hiwassee ride from the dome. With my health I doubt that I will ever do it. It's about 500 miles from me. Then, my small tanks of oxygen only last between 3 1/2 and 4 hours. That mean I'd have to take an extra tank or take one of my bigger tanks whch gives me about 6 to 6 1/2 hours. That is pretty heavy to carry so I'd probably have to use the rolling cart with it. If I took the rolling thing, they'd probably charge me an extra fare for the room that takes up. The they probably wouldn't let me up in the dome with that because I would have to walk the cart up the stairs. If they charged an extra fare, that would be $186 for a dome ride for me.
The moral of the story is: Don't smoke cigarettes and you won't have to miss out on a dome ride when you get old.
:-[Sorry to hear about that, Terry :-[
Surprised that no one has mentioned mountain railroading in the Colorado Rockies. (standard garage of course, Trainman!) winter at near 12000 ft, broken rotary, frozen fingers and toes, gasping for breath at the high altitude, road closed for nearly 80 days, thats REAL mountain railroading, and at rifle site notch on the D&SL there is both a tunnel and a trestle passing over it. Paul G
Colorado Midland? Yes, a seldom modeled road. Colorado standard gauge. They had two tunnels over their major pass, can't think of the name right now. It was the shortest route west over the mountains but almost impossible operationally. It finally gave up early, 1920 maybe? Someone correct me. A stub called the Midland Terminal held on until after WW2 but it gave up too. Great modeling subject almost never done, although some guy is doing a museum quality O Scale layout, I think I remember it in one of the magazines a few years ago.
you're confusing railroads Trainman. the Colorado Midland, thanks to the government, (USRA), closed down around 1920. The RR i'm talking about is the Denver & Salt Lake., also known as the Denver Northwestern & Pacific, also known as the Moffat Road. In 1928 the Moffat Tunnel was opened and the Hill Route was abandoned. They continued on as the D&SL till 1947 when they were absorbed by the D&RG. That brings up another long story as to whether the Rio Grande should have been renamed the D&SL. Paul G :o
The way I heard it, the MP went broke trying to buy control of the Rio Grande. Which put it into receivership until 1956 and is also why almost no MP steam engines were preserved. So if things had worked out, the D&RGW would have been part of the Mopac. Correct me as needed. This is all stuff I remember from 101 years ago.
Quote from: Trainman203 on June 09, 2020, 09:25:03 PM
The way I heard it, the MP went broke trying to buy control of the Rio Grande. Which put it into receivership until 1956 and is also why almost no MP steam engines were preserved. So if things had worked out, the D&RGW would have been part of the Mopac. Correct me as needed. This is all stuff I remember from 101 years ago.
Actually, Both the D&RGW and MoPac were part of George Gould's atempt to build a true transcontinental railroad. Other lines in this system were Western Pacific, Wabash, Wheeling & Lake Erie and Western Maryland. He went broke trying to build a link between the Wheeling & Lake Erie and the Western Maryland via Pittsburgh. The Wabash- Pittsburgh Terminal was built to extremely high, and expensive standards, and when he was unable to extend the line east of Pittsburgh, local traffic wasn't enough to sustain it. The Western Maryland had built a super railroad from CUmberland, MD west to Connellsville, Pa, and eventually in 1932 the W-PT successor P&WV was able to complete the link to COnnellsville from Pittsburgh. with all the logical routes between the two cities already taken by other railroads, they were forced to follow the ridge tops, jumping from ridge to ridge via huge trestles that earned the line the nickname "High & Dry." BY that time, of course, George Gould and his dreams of a transcontinental railroad were long gone. Ironically, the railroad that brought down an empire survives to-day, intact except for the last couple of miles into downtown Pittsburgh.
Thanks. Good executive summary.
I did a little Wiki- search about the Wabash-Pittsburgh Terminal and the whole George Gould transcontinental boondoggle, that seems to be the best description. The whole scheme was 30 years too late, cobbling together existing lines and building tenuous connections to create a ill conceived larger system . It's all very much like the B F Yoakum scheme around the same time to create parallel competition to the IC from Chicago to New Orleans with the Rock Island, the Gulf Coast Lines/Frisco et al. The afterglow of the already ended golden era of railroads.
But the story of the Wabash Tunnel even today still a boondoggle, the Monongahela River bridge that killed 10 men in a collapse days before completion, which just stopped dead at a terminal with the train shed at least 100 feet above street level, a beautiful terminal station that was 20 years too late and should have never been built, the whole thing being a loser from the beginning and only lasting 40 years, man, it's a railroad soap opera on a par with the never-completed Grand Trunk in New England.
That it is. It's a fascinating history. The Wabash Tunnel exists to-day as a HOV tunnel that begins and ends in inconvenient places so has never been fully utilized. But the rest of the story is that once the P&WV extended to Connellsville, it became an integral part of the Alphabet Route along with the Western Maryland and Nickle Plate. As late as the 1970s, there were 3 scheduled freights each way plus many extras.
A footnote is that because of the topography and the less than desirable route they were forced to use, the main yard in Pittsburgh was squeezed into the only usable spot they could find, with a tunnel on one end, and a 100 foot high bridge on the other.
Another equally fascinating story is that of the never completed South Penn from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg. Backed by the New York Central and prominent Pittsburgh industrialists as a way to break the PRR's effective monopoly on steel and coal traffic to the east coast. Pennsylvania's geography includes a band of parallel ridges that run counter to any cross state transportation corridor. PRR and B&O used river valleys to get through these ridges to the Allegheny Front, a mountain nobody could avoid. The South Penn, lacking such a route, tackled the ridges head on through a series of tunnels, several of which are still in use as part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
;D Getting back to western RR's during the 20's & 30's due to financial difficulties the Rio Grande deferred so much maintenance that local wags said that D&RGW stood for Dangerous & Rapidly Getting Worse. ;D