Hi all, Long-time occasional lurker here. I've finally found some ideas for a layout that I'm both excited about and are feasible for the space I have. Essentially, I have a 14'x7' space in a corner which I can leave permanent, with a large area of the room I can expand into temporarily. I'm trying to throw some ideas into Anytrack to make sure my ideas of dimensions are what I think they are, and so far it's working out, and with the benchwork plan I've come up with I'll be able to have some nice long reasonably straight runs. I'm modeling the Great Northern in Minot, North Dakota and westward, in a theoretical 1960s where steam was still hanging on by its fingernails (given that GN retired steam in 1958, that's not too much of a stretch). I've always loved the look of the mid-century Empire Builder, and some of the photos of Minot I've seen with the GN warehouse/HQ dominating the view up Main Street just scream to be modeled. However, given that I've never actually laid track beyond thumb-tacking it to plywood when I was a kid, I wanted to get some comments on my yard plan. First off, I'm modeling in N scale, to make the most of my available space. I need to make it sectional, as I'm renting. I figured the greatest space hog would be a yard, and since I want to be able to do operating sessions, at least some kind of yard is a requirement. I've spent some time playing with Anyrail, and I've come up with the following: Layout Design Notes by Gary Helriegel posted Dec 12, 2019 at 6:50 PM I've hit the 50-trackpiece limit, I'm just waiting for the holidays to be over before I upgrade, but this captures the gist of what I want to do. The white box in the middle is the GN HQ, visible in this photo: Looking at various maps, I think the 'feel' of the town is captured fairly well. What I'm not so sure about is how this will operate. Do I have too many/too few industries for the available space? Too many/too few tracks? It's hard to visualize until I actually have a surface to draw on, but I'd like to be able to at least finalize the benchwork so I can do that.
If that was my footprint I would: Your greatest 'space hog' is the turntable / roundhouse. If you insist on having one then put it near one end or the other. The current location is hard to reach. I personally like continuous running and as such would include a loop Put switching along the forward 18"s some of it off and on the 'main', (loop). Include in your switching an 'interchange' track to facilitate moving cars on and off the layout. The 'yard' can be two or 3 relatively short tracks. Again, this is what I would do with the space. You have your own wants / needs. Hope this helps.
You're on the right track. My main observation is if you plan on running the section you've drawn as a "stand alone", you need to have a little more room on each end.......it looks like you have the turn outs right next to the edge, which means you don't have room for a loco, or definitely a loco and any cars to use the turn out. That means you can't get from the tracks on one side of your mainline to the tracks on the other side.
This is just the 'yard' section- off the left will be the main line, which will have some long straight areas, but there will be a curve which I need to finalize the yard size before I can do more than sketch it in. The 'bottom' will be connected to some kind of temporary staging (rollaway, folding, etc) to represent trains to/from Minnesota and Chicago. I'd make it permanent benchwork, but that'd block my bedroom door The 'tongue' at the bottom left would be detachable and stored in the space to the left of the layout when not in use. The heavy line in the middle of the L shape is some kind of scene divider (trees, hills, 'sky' wall, etc). The idea is the mainline leaves the yard, curves around 180 degrees, comes back toward the loop in the center of the space, then heads 'southwest', curves around again, then heads back up the outside left and down to underdeck staging. The idea is to maximize 'straight lines' as much as possible, giving probably 40-50 feet of linear run. Not sure yet if I'll set it up for continuous running- I could connect the loop to the staging area and run underdeck, have it loop back under the yard and re-emerge at the scene divider at the left (where it says down to staging). That would make operating more interesting, as GN in this area was primarily singletrack and I'd like to keep that feature, so I'd have to divert to sidings more often. This would be a lot easier if I could just use the dark shaded space- unfortunately, that's computer desks and exercise equipment and whatnot.
Gary, Welcome aboard, and congrats on starting your first layout! I'm in Minot right now, have lived here almost 5 years, and have plenty of rail action photos from the Magic City. Time hasn't been exceptionally kind to the GN's remnants after BN and BNSF's took over, but evidence remains in some places. Footbridge over the old yard, near the steam shop: still exists, although is closed for a long time to do repairs and conduct flood protection project construction. Portion of the GN freight house: exists, used as a furniture warehouse. Soo freight house: exists. Soo depot: exists. GN depot: exists, in current/daily Amtrak use. Some herringbone bricks visible under blacktop on west end of passenger platform. Gassman Coulee Trestle: exists, basically unchanged since GN strengthened it in the 1920s for heavier steam power. Gone: engine shop/roundhouse, turntable, Soo Tower, semaphore and searchlight signals, most of the freight house complex. Most of the wood and early elevators are gone. A large concrete one in the below photo still exists. A neat Soo photo from the 1940s: https://www.shorpy.com/node/25098?s...QdKssR8jj7ArT-wDAnKnB6susD-uneXjR69V4#caption
Wow... I never really expected to see so much of the stuff I've been staring at in diagram form from the Sanborn maps. Most of the old photos of Minot I can find near the railyards are of Main Street or aerials, so this is -immensely- helpful. I think I've got enough of the old GN freight house to start building except the door positions, but I found a similarly-shaped NP freight house I can pillage from. Thanks much for the photo- many of the still-extant buildings that I might model can be filled in from Google Maps, but this definitely helps fill in the gaps.
I can go on a photo safari to bag detail shots of the freight houses, maybe get dimensions, etc. What do you need specifically? The pedestrian bridge was probably steel across the main from the beginning, but the chain link fence was added much later I'm sure. There's one over the east storage yard, too. Just east of the shop complex, the railroad crossed the Souris River. This bridge looks fairly old, although in the 50's it may have been a wood pile bridge. The Soo depot is pretty nice and should be included, although it is a fairly ornate and unique structure. Another interesting town is Des Lacs, about 13 miles west of Minot. It has a neat steel trestle, and arow of elevators and the water tank existed until 2012 or so. https://flic.kr/p/2hKvNW3 The steel trestle is next to a modern concrete one as this is now 2MT territory.
Interesting towns? Well, If you want to get crazy, I'd do part of the Northgate branch. A group of wooden trestles is peppered along this line. Here's one near Coulee, ND. The branch is heavy rail today for 286K lb cars, but then would have been fairly light rail. Niobe, Bowbells, Northgate itself would be good little towns to explore. I really want to railfan this line, as the only time I have so far, it was shut down for severe weather. The train made it 3 miles from me and tied down, then the crew went back to Minot! The terrain is gently rolling, few curves, but some cuts and fills, as well as a few small towns with grain elevators. The track profile is fairly flat. This photo would be pretty similar in your model, with GP7s and grain boxcars.
Very cool building. I doubt that it had the steel roofing back then, but maybe. Also interesting to me are the horizontal pieces attached to the roofing. I had to do something similar on our steel roof. They help to keep the snow from sliding off the roof. Before I added something similar even a small snow load would slide off the roof and block the walkways and the attached solar green house's glass. It heats the shop so in order for it to capture the sun I'd have to go out and dig out in front of the green house and other walkways after every snow. Now I don't , Sumner
I'm planning on including that Soo depot, since it's right on Main Street and visible in nearly every shot of the GN division HQ/freight house I have. Won't have the table space for much else, but I'm thinking I'll do a lift-out as I really would like some of that street to be represented. I picked up the grain elevator kit that I'll need, so I now have a much better idea of the space needed for various things. I've got measurements that are accurate enough from Sanborn maps- there's a 1926 available online at https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4174mm.g065551926/?sp=2, and I got in touch with the ND state historical society for microfilm scans of the 1953 version. I've also got a photobook on Minot history in the 60s and 70s by Bruce Anderson, which has tons of shots of Main Street, some including the freight house, but nothing that shows the door detail of the single-story portion. I did find a few shots online of the back of the house, and an overhead shot which includes the viaduct, the car shops, and what looks like about half the roundhouse remaining. I can spot windows from that one, as well as at least one open garage door, but it's a bit too far out. Not sure how far your photos go back, but if you have any shots of the 'freight house' portion of the building, or detail of the GN sign, it'd be greatly appreciated. Going to be scaling the building down to about 2/3. As much as I'd love to include the roundhouse, space constraints mean it'll have to be in backdrop photo form. Going to try to include the car shops, though. Ended up shrinking the yard down a bit, and making it stub-ended as well as rearranging, but it still 'feels' right. Still not sure what I'll be doing for the industry spur on the left, but leaning toward seed warehouse or an older grain elevator More or less final initial module design by Gary Helriegel posted Jan 3, 2020 at 6:24 PM
My photos go back to 2016... not much historical help! I think the only bit of the GN freight house left is the two story part. The Soo depot has a single story part as well.
I found more photos. The Ron V. Nixon collection in the Museum of the Rockies has a group of Nixon photos from Minot. You can search by location. http://www.morphotoarchive.org/rvndb/
I think I found some low-res versions of some of these- thanks much for sharing, that'll help quite a bit. Some of the others, though, in addition to having some beautiful steam power, will be handy for scenicing the transition module toward Gassman Coulee. Also discovered some lovely shots of long-gone power and structures where I'm living- the roundhouse in this one hasn't been around for a loooong time. http://www.morphotoarchive.org/rvndb/rvnjpeg_img_rec.php?objno=RVN03064
