East Michigan Shortline

Hello Everyone. This is a two level plan for a shortline running across Michigan's "Thumb" area. The entire upper level is used for Greenriver, an urban/industrial area supposedly located near Bay City/Saginaw, which is represented by upper level staging. The lower level represents the run across the thumb to Port Erehwon (Yeah, It's misspelled on the drawing. Didn't notice until I had plotted and scanned it.) This is a small Great Lakes port that, like many on the east shore of Lake Huron, shifted from commercial to mostly recreational as lake vessels got larger. From there, Port Huron is represented by staging. Between the port and the train elevator is Hicksville, (my wife's euphemism for any place that's out in the middle of nowhere). This is a farming town with industries and businesses typical of the rural communities in the Thumb, although it does boast more rail served industries than most. The drawback to the plan here is that all switching is done trailing point by eastbound (Greenriver to Port Erehwon freights). Westbound cars are to be backhauled to the siding behind the scrapyard at Greenriver and picked up there by an eastbound freight.

The modeled era will scroll from 1908 to 2009 by changing equipment, details and structures on interchangeable bases. Trains will be short and generally powered by four axle diesels, ten wheelers or consolidations. Looking form comments problems I have not noticed, etc.

 

No, you didn't miss it. I posted this at lunchtime and neglected to include it. This layout is HO scale and is designed to fit in an 8-1/2' x 9' guest house at our place up North. (Looking ahead to retirement.) Space may increase to 20' length in the future, allowing more mainline and larger staging to be built to the right of the present plan. Minimum mainline radius is 20" with 18" on some spurs. Also note that the upper left section of the top level and the lower left section of the lower level are already existing and are to be transplanted from my present layout.

 

Looks pretty interesting. Can you explain the train elevator. Is it a helix , a grade or something else?
Dave

 

I've seen a few people do this and have some ideas as to how I want to proceed. A complete train is actually raised (or lowered) from one level to the other. The mechanism involves a pair of ways or tracks that the roadbed rides on and a raising/lowering device which can be either hand or power operated. I am tinkering with a way to support the roadbed that uses minimal space and hopefully allows the center area of both levels to have structures and scenery.

 

As a follow up to my prior post, here is a link to a G scale example of a train elevator.

 

That is very interesting. It's something like I've been researching in the mining/logging industry to get cars up and down a hill sideways.

 

Interesting. A lot of strange things were done in logging and mining due to difficult access and a need to keep costs down. It does make for some interesting modeling opportunities.

 

Been tinkering with designs for the train elevator and have come up with this:

The Roadbed is 1/2" plywood placed on a wraparound made from 3 thicknesses of 1/4" luan plywood laminated together. The slides are 1" stainless tubing sliding in nylon bushings which are held in steel brackets. The drive is undetermined but will be either screw or cable on a drum powered by hand crank or motor. Total lift (separation between levels) will be about 18".

 

I've been rolling this track plan over for some time now and have found myself less than pleased with a couple of things about it. First of all, I designed it around Ian Rice's recommendation of a 20" minimum radius for small layouts, but in MRP, Tony Koester advocates using larger radius curves. I was also concerned about the wide peninsula created by the train elevator and a lack of access. I came up with the single deck plan below with radii of 24" or larger on the main line and making fairly extensive use of Walthers' curved turnouts.
However, it looks like I haven't done myself much good in terms of access and have lost a number of the industries I wanted. There is also little room for distinct urban vs rural areas. I am also probably overusing the siding that serves the sugar beet refinery by using it for the coal dock, freight house and another industry. Possibly the sugar plant could be switched on the night shift and the others by the day crew. Staging is located behind the sugar beet refinery and should be adequate to stage 6-7 car freights and short passenger trains. The layout will be HO scale and the largest power that will operate regularly will be a USRA Pacific and a light Mikado, with most being smaller (Consolidations, Ten Wheelers, 4 axle diesels). The space is 8-1/2' X 9'.

So- Two questions. First, what are everyone's thoughts on curve radii, and second, I am wondering about building on two levels connected by fiddling- perhaps using Ian Rice's cassette staging idea. Yes, I know a strictly switching layout would be much easier to fit in the space, but that's not what I want to build. Trains have to go somewhere and I'm pretty determined to figure out how to make that work. Thanks in advance for everyone's thoughts.

 

Thanks for the reply, Box. Actually, the depot is out on the run-through main. The stub end spur serves finished product loading for the sugar beet refinery. However, as you pointed out, not having a dedicated yard is a problem that would require the use of whatever tracks are available for dropping/sorting/picking up inbound and outbound cars. I had given that considerable thought and then probably made the wrong call anyway. I would hope to get by with a minimal yard, 2 or 3 tracks. That seemed to work for the old PH&D at Port Huron, MI. As concerns minimum radius, you're thinking Ian Rice's 20" radius recommendation is valid, then? I think he based that on using a P2K 0-8-0.