I've been building a pretty large layout in my house for the past 6 months, but things have taken a turn for the worse and we are probably going to downsize a little. Basically we had a new home built, and by the time we got done and went to convert our loan to 30yr fixed the rates were in the crapper and we ended up with a pretty high payment for the loan amount. Our bank want's $9K in fee's and all the crap to re-fi, and I'd really like a larger lot anyway so I think were just gonna sell. Anyway with the rates where they are now we will net some good equity, and I'm going to purchase an older/fixer home on some property and have a large pole building put up with an upstairs solely dedicated to..you guessed it, the layout. The size of the property will ultimately decide the size of the shop and therefore the layout, but I am hoping for at least a 28x36 building. I'm planning on having a drop down stairway somewhere in the middle of the 2nd story so that I can run layout all around the walls without a duck under. I run GP38s thru GP50's, -9's, Sd40-2's in UP/BN/SP paint. I'd like to model a washington/oregon/n-california area that has some decent trackage, big yards, but with more rural scenery and mountains, with maybe a few industries tossed in. I love the Cascade Division over Steven's pass, but I'll go broke/grow old making enough tree's so it looks right. I'm thinking an area in oregon or nor-cal will be a sparse and more wallet friendly scenery to build. I'm kinda imagining a west-to-east type layout with the scenery change from western greenery to mountain pass to eastern desert, with a walled off staging room looping the train back to the "beginning" again. Any ideas of a particular area anyone could recommend?
Something out of Klamath Falls would be good. There are several railroad that do/did orginate out K-Falls. Some of the railroads out of there might fit what you are looking for.
That's funny, I was researching that area when I wrote this post.... I need to find some more details of the track maps and yard layouts, seems to be hard info to find. I already have alot of signals(verticle 3 light) and stuff that aren't really prototypical I may end up doing a "loose" modeling of that area.
I'm looking to model the 80's-90's era. To be exact just in the period they were starting to phase out the caboose, and when BN and SP were still alive and kicking. My newest motive power is 3ea SP C44-9w's. I have a 3 unit SD40-2 BN "coal train" with walthers hoppers and caboose. I have custom built a bunch of brass 3 aspect vertical head signals I'd like to utilize, but building a few more of a different type wouldn't be a big deal.
The caboose was always my favorite part of the train don't kill the caboose all over again. Getting vehicles and buildings for that era are fairly easy. 80s-90s would be good for availability. If you're going to phase out your caboose in that era (and are loosely modeling anyway) you could take a fe caboose, and connect them with a Pike metal building and create a railway museum or resturant. I've seen both in real life since the caboose was phased out.
^^I plan on running them on some of my trains, others without. The EOT light I am installing on the cabeese will also help the signal system detect both ends of the train.
It's looking like I'm going to be yet another modeling the cascade sub. After "shopping" around on the internet for photo's and information, I found the cascade sub to be well documented from history to images on google earth. Other places with the mountain scenery just don't have the trackage I'm after. Unlike some other layouts, I'm considering modeling a more "magnified" portion of the line from salt creek thru cresent lake omiting the Oakridge yard for a concealed staging yard. The Utah/Colorado area also catch's my interest-and would be a little more unique- but there is a lack of information and images pertaining to the trackage and scenery.
Here's some links to great websites pertaining to the Colorado/Utah area. Google earth also has some very good satellite images of the DRGW main. You can have high desert / bottle brush pine scenery. There is plenty of coal traffic, plus some great opportunity for industrial areas in the more populated terminal cities. If you choose to model this area, do yourself a favor and invest in a couple of Bragdon's rock molds. http://www.coloradorailfan.com/ DRGW.NET - Dedicated to Preserving the Memory of the Rio Grande UtahRails.net Home Page There are tons of other websites out there with prototype info about the DRGW and it's successors. Good luck and happy modeling!
