Greetings All, A couple of years (or more) ago I had posted an Xtrak sketch for a track plan of my old hometown, Hoopeston Illinois, that resides at milepost 99 along the former L&N Chicago Sub. Now that I've relocated from Phoenix to Pittsburgh and once again have a basement I can start planning in earnest! This will be a relatively simple plan on two levels. Staging yard down below that will simulate traffic moving North from Danville Brewer Yard, and South from Chicago's Clearing Yard/Yard Center. Current plan is to double track each helix to simulate the passing sidings at Rossville and Wellington, as well as facilitate the staging of an active train. In the late 70's/early 80's Hoopeston had quite a bit of industry for a town with a population less than 10,000 people. L&N served Joan of Arc, Stokely Van Camp, two grain elevators, and American Can Company via interchange with the Norfolk and Western. L&N operated 10 scheduled trains per day through Hoopeston, 5 North / 5 South, not counting extras, and one local out of Danville to switch the industries between Danville and Woodland Junction. At the height of the corn pack in the late summer it would not be uncommon to have two locals per day, one early in the day and one late at night. My 1981 timetable shows the following scheduled trains: Northbound: 722: TOFC 792: Fast Freight 718: Fast Freight 720: TOFC 790: Fast Freight Southbound: 723: TOFC 791: Fast Freight 721: TOFC 717: Fast Freight 795: Fast Freight One of the three rooms in my basement is 21 x 7. My plan to build the "Hoopeston Layout" has a two-fold purpose. First: I wanna run some trains! I've been slowly building up the rolling stock/motive power roster for the last 4 years and it's time I see some of it rolling down the rails! Second: It will provide a platform for me to knock the cobwebs off my modeling skills before I take on "the big layout" at some point in the future. I do have a 3rd garage bay that could be turned into layout space without too much heartburn so I've been toying with that option. This is a tentative "basic" track plan on two levels with lower level staging that models the L&N Chicago Sub between Brewer Yard in Danville Illnois northward to Woodland Junction. Lower level staging will simulate traffic moving North from Evansville, and South from Chicago. Main Level is home to Danville Brewer Yard (crew change point between Evansville and Chicago), Bismarck, Rossville (passing siding location), and Hoopeston. Second level will model Wellington (second passing siding location), Milford, and Woodland Junction. From Woodland Junction northward L&N/MoPac shared the double track into Chicago. Over the next few weeks I'm planning on having a website up to begin documenting the construction of the "Hoopeston" layout, as well as creating a repository of prototype information/message forums for other fans of the L&N Evansville Division. Look for http://www.evansvilledivision.net to be active soon! Comments/criticism on all the above most welcome. Mike Collier
So, two concentric helices on the lower right? The upper level, especially, looks very empty - then I remember it's designed for 40-car trains. It has to be sparse.
I like the overall plan--looks like you have a nice lengthy mainline run with some straightaways to feature the 40-car trains you plan on running. I don't completely understand the helixes yet, but then again I have only been awake for about 10 minutes Will you continue posting progress updates to this thread? If so I'll be sure to follow along. Jamie
About time,,, LOL.. Well,, fly me out there,,, pay me,, feed me,, and I can get it all done right quick.LOL Glad to see that your are your way with some modeling.. Look foward to pics. Adios WYatt
Just need to remember to make sure that the Hoopeston module is wide enough to go to the 500 block of E. Lincoln. That way you can make it more realistic by adding your old house, complete with 2 kids, with portable scanner( Cletus) in hand, busting out of the basement layout room, and hauling A$$ full speed to the tracks to see if it was a crew we knew and to do some railfanning:tb-tongue: Man, I miss those days as I was Family Lines System's co-conspiritor at that time. Was a great time and place to be a kid, and we got to know the vast majority of the over the road crews and basically all of the local crews. We spent alot of time with those guys, both on the ground and either in Cab or caboose. Glad to see this is finally going to become a reality, and not just a paper layout. Just wish I was closer, so that I could help more. Sure I am a little rusty at alot of it , but sure it would come back soon enough:thumbs_up:
Mike: Nice looking plans...Doing the Hoopeston portion of the layout as a module will certainly let you dust off your modeling skills. Helix contruction is tough, especially stacked helixes like in your plans. Click the link to my Blog below and look for some entries about stacked helixes and bowl-shaped helixes. Also check out Cleggie's and HemiAdd2d's threads on constructing bowl-shaped helixes for their layouts. Other TB members have posted pics of their stacked helixes, but I haven't seen many recently active threads detailing actual construction steps for the stacked helixes. Like CSX Dixie Line, I stumbled a little bit in trying to figure out the helix connections between your levels on your big plan. I was able to follow the track plan for the middle (Danville-Hoopeston) level. It looks like the lower right helix rising from the lower staging shelf will have a double track and will turn in a counter-clockwise fashion as it rises to the middle level: 1. The track on the outside will rise counter-clockwise from Evansville staging to Danville's Brewer Yard on the middle (Danville-Hoopeston) level. Track from the Evansville Staging Yard will enter the helix at the bottom and toward the back of the lower (staging) shelf, and will exit onto the middle (Danville-Hoopeston) level rising as it passes from left to right across the front of the helix along the aisle; 2. The track on the inside loop will also rise counter-clockwise from the lower level and will also enter the helix at the back of the shelf, but will connect to the Chicago staging tracks instead of to the Evansville staging tracks. As it rises, the inside track of the helix will not exit onto the middle level at all; instead, it will pass by the middle level without appearing at all, and will continue to rise as it turns counter-clockwise to proceed on up to Woodland on the upper/top (Wellington-Woodland) level. Here is where I became confused. The top (Wellington-Woodland) level track plan shows the rising track exiting the top of the helix as if the helix had turned clockwise instead of counter-clockwise. In order to exit a counter-clockwise rising helix at Woodland, the track should appear rising from left to right across the front of the helix (by the aisle) instead of from behind the helix in the back corner of the shelf. Did you mean to draw your tangent tracks where they exit the top of the helix from the front of the helix to Woodland Junction instead of from the back? Such a change would make construction of that lower right helix MUCH easier.
It looks like you plan on building the helixes for your 7x21 "warm-up/dust-off" Hoopeston layout as 2 separate helix modules that fit at each end of a town module. If I'm reading your Hoopeston Module plans correctly, the town module will fit into the big layout exactly into the middle level where Hoopston needs to be. The left helix in the smaller dust-off layout that descends clockwise from Hoopeston to staging will fit into the big layout where the tracks descend clockwise from Danville to Evansville staging...or else where the upper right helix rises from Hoopston up to Wellington. But the other (right side) Module helix climbs in the wrong direction to continue the climb out of staging and on past the Danville-Hoopeston middle level up to the Woodland-Wellington upper level. However... You could use the right side Module helix if the upper right side helix on the big layout rose in a clockwise direction from Hoopeston to Wellington. The problem with that solution is that the Hoopeston town module might have to be modified (shortened) by 3 feet or cut in half to fit along both sides of the Hoopeston-North Rossville peninsula to accommodate the track entering the bottom of the clockwise rising helix at the back of the helix near Hoopeston and then exiting on the upper level by passing right to left in front of the helix at Wellington. As an alternative to shortening the Hoopeston town module to fit into the larger layout... How would you feel about building the right helix in the Hoopeston Module as a helix that falls as it turns clockwise instead of counter-clockwise? This will mean angling the town module of the 7x21 dust-off layout to enter the right side helix at the back of the shelf so the overall trackplan footprint is still close to 7x21, and tracks at the right end of the Hoopeston town module will be harder to reach (it will be close to 27 inches from the fascia to where the track passes into the helix to begin its first descending loop). But the up-side is that this is only a temporary layout to dust off your skills, and the big layout will be able to use all three modules (the Hoopeston town module, plus both the left and the right side helixes) with minimal tweaking (just attach the town module at the bottom (front) of the right hand helix instead of at the top (back) and connect the left side helix to the middle shelf where the Danville Yard will go). My guess is that while constructing the left hand helix module for the smaller dust-off layout, it wouldn't be too much of a challenge to also construct the "3rd" helix (which is really just an extension of the inner track of the left hand helix to an upper level). It might look a little odd without any backdrop, but putting a backdrop along the back of the Hoopeston town module and then bending it around the front of the upper part of the left hand helix would cure that quickly (and give you some experience working inside a helix with limited access from the outside---lighting is poor and reaching the outside track of an enclosed double track helix (or the outside rail of a single track helix) is hard.
