Track plan is near final stage

OK, so here's the modified track plan, as it stands right now. The OG, the first section to work on, will be the Jerome & Southwestern (J&SW) track plan. This image isn't super high resolution, but I still have the actual book, so I'm good. Not just the track, but also the basic scenic beats will also be followed; i.e., where he's got Apache Gorge, I'll have Injun Gorge (maybe I should call it Dead Indian Gorge; that's actually a real name that's quite common in Wyoming for a lot of features; Dead Indian Pass, Dead Indian Gulch, Dead Indian Creek, Dead Indian Mesa, Dead Indian Peak, etc.) I also have the same two main towns (renamed), and I'll even be using the same (when I can get them) building kits to some degree, or similar ones. It's not going to be saguaro Arizona scenery, but rather PJ woodland with prickly pear and yuccas. Still desert, but much more grassy and yellow rather than red and... dirt, I guess.

Although Olsen doesn't highlight this, it's easy to read between the lines that some aspects of his presentation of this were not how it always was. He talks about backdrops being against the left and top edges, but clearly they weren't always there, because he has pictures of them missing and people standing on those sides. But he also has pictures with the backdrop in place and the railroad in the corner of a family room. I always thought that that was very odd given the fact that the entire top edge of the railroad was in a tunnel, including at least one turnout, possibly two depending on how strictly you count it. That would be a crazy situation to actually have, but if he didn't actually have it, it just looked like he did, then you'd be OK. I want to make backdrops be easily removable and repositionable on any edge of the table, for photographic/videographic reasons (which seems to have been a clear consideration of Olsen's as well, and I'd actually like the scenic the inside of the tunnels to be open against the top edge, and have some interesting stuff going on there. The more left-hand side of the area will be a railroad tunnel with support beams and rock walls, as well as some tiny yellow LED lights, while from the turnout and beyond, I actually want to have an Indiana Jones-esque scene where there's an underground excavation of some sort going on. I may even put a loading dock there, and make it be a legitimate potential stop for the trains.

Olson also had the Back Alley & Wharf expansion (BA&W), a 2x6 expansion that connects to the tracks that go off the edge shown above. Here's the schematic for that.

I have two main changes that I intend to make to this; first, at least one of the tracks on the right edge will connect to the next 4x8 module. And, of course, it'll also be seriously rethemed. The left hand side will be a town, not a city, with some railroad facilities that I hadn't modeled anywhere else. This town will be called Mirabeau (named for early Texian Republic president Mirabeau Lamar) and rather than a wharf into a harbor, the right hand side will be a bayou/swamp with bald cypresses (with knees coming up out of the water), spanish moss, and shady looking businesses like Biden & Son Swamp tours, with dead bodies being fed to alligators out back, etc. I also would love to have an Inspector Legrasse busting up some cultists in a small diorama-like scene. I might make a "tunnel" disguised as a forest canopy, as well as a grade increase on the track crossing over to the new section.

The last section will be based on the original Gorre & Daphetid track plan, although expanded to 4x8 (it was actually quite a bit smaller, believe it or not. 3½x7 or something like that. I've also rotated it, but I'm not sure this is the final form; I might flip it too. In any case, a gigantic cliff and curved trestle will great the viewers from the bottom edge. And I want a small scale 65' or so turntable to deal with my need to turn trains around so that I'm not just manually picking them up to turn them around. I have too many tracks coming off the turntable; I actually don't know that I need any at all; it could simply be to get on the turntable and turnaround. I'll probably keep two small tracks as holding tracks, at least, though.

I won't have a roundhouse, but a town will be there; Travis, so I'll need more small buildings. 

The other town will be Crockett, and it may be located where Gorre is on the schematic. Daphetid will not be a town, but will be a high lumber camp, I kind of like that trains can be up there on a higher point looking down at other trains getting read to cross the curved trestle in the front. 

That passing siding may be moved a bit so that it's not on the curve, however, or if it is, at least it's at the very end of the curve rather than halfway across the table. I did mention, right, that the trackplan will eventually be slightly large in scale than as shown? I also need to come up with a better plan for scenery; other than the curved trestle and probably a waterfall cascading next to it, I have only vaguely "mountain stuff" in mind for the place.

Jefferson & Davis vs Travis & Crockett

The two towns in the Jerome & Southwestern copycat track plan will be Jefferson and Davis. Mirabeau is the town on the spur, and the territorial capitol, although only a small portion of it will be modeled. In the Grizzly Mountain section, the two towns will be Travis and Crockett. I thought briefly about using Bowie or Milam, but I just like the names Travis and Crockett a little better, I think.

In any case, the idea is that under the rubric of the Ruritanian Territorial Railroad Commission, an office of the territorial government, that many smaller "mom & pop" railroads bid on main access to various routes as government contractors of sorts, and the cost of laying and maintaining the lines, bridges, and even some of the facilities are subsidized because it was worth it to the territorial government to have access to rail in the territory. In return, these mom & pop shortlines, as most of them are, are required to pass along combines or passenger cars, along with the mail, as coordinated by the Commission. The Commissioner, or at least one of the handful of people that work in his small office, coordinates this stuff, as well as occasional right of way issues between the various railroads to make sure that the railroads are meeting the needs of the territorial citizens, and are working together.

Jefferson & Davis, or J&D and Travis & Crockett, or T&C, are two such lines. The J&D will be the J&SW style Davis County desert/mountain section, and the T&C will be in the Grizzlies. Mirabeau will be where their offices are, as well as the RTRRC's offices, as well as shared engine facilities. But technically, this railroad is two railroads. I like the idea that the owners are cantankerous middle aged old campaigners who respect and even like each other, but are cautious about showing too much of that because they're also rivals to some degree. They actually work together fairly well, but then—mostly for show—they have to argue too. Think of them as not unlike King Stefan and King Hubert; the parent kings of Princess Aurora (the titular character) and her love interest Prince Phillip respectively, from the Disney Sleeping Beauty. Their kids aren't betrothed... but secretly, they are engaged. While they haven't told their parents yet, because they're afraid of their fathers' reactions, but secretly, both would love to see them married and their two businesses combined, so they can retire knowing that their businesses have grown and prospered under the wise stewardship of Phillip, Hubert's son. Rose, Stefan's daughter, is of course wonderful, but has no interest in running a business because she's actually a feminine woman, and not a man trying to be a poor imitation of a woman. She wants to raise a family and have a bunch of kids. Both fathers and their mothers couldn't possibly imagine a better outcome, but ironically, nobody will admit it until it happens, so the engagement is a secret for now.

Anyway, I'd love to add little backstory vignettes like that to the railroad as I build it. But what I really want to talk about is that while I've identified eight locomotives that I want, I want to split them 4x4 between the two railroads. Because of right of way issues, it's always possible for one loco of one railroad to operate on the other, but mostly they stay on their own side, and of course in the Mirabeau spur. 

Because all eight of these are relatively small steam engines, in order to give more visual distinction between them, I want to have them be a little bit more colorful than normal; not just plain black, or black with silver front ends. J&D's colors will be red and white (or pale gray), based on the James Long Republic of Texas flag.

This would imply that I can use red for some accent colors. But I don't want all of the locomotives to look too uniform; that's beside the point, plus it isn't in character anyway. These are fairly rough and tumble railroads without really fat profits, so imagining them being very particular about repainting all of their stock to be visually the same.

Here's the four that I have assigned I think to J&D and what I'd like to paint them as.

• 2-truck Heisler, with a red painted roof. Silver or "gunmetal" front end
• 0-4-0 Camelback with red painted roof and tender top. Silver or gunmetal front end.
• 4-4-0 "Modern" in plain black, including front end and cab roof.
• 0-6-0 USRA switcher with red cab sides, and other details (headlight, etc.) as well as a mostly red-painted Vandy tender.

White would also be the color of the lettering and numbering.

The T&C will use the Burnet flag and associated colors, which are similar to the University of Michigan by coincidence. Numbering and lettering will be in maize/gold and accent colors would be navy blue. This railroad will also use four locomotives, and the ones that I'd want, along with their associated color schemes, are 

• 2-truck Shay, with a navy cab roof and maybe maize window trim.
• 2-truck Climax, in plain black.
• 2-6-0 Camelback, with maize colored cab walls. Not sure if the boiler will be black (graphite, really) or navy colored. Navy might be too much.
• 0-4-0 little slope-backed switcher, the AHM thing from the past (John Olsen had one on the J&SW, although he obviously greatly preferred to show the Heisler). Probably paint it up like the Shay, but I could go really colorful with it too. Maybe if the Shay has a navy cab roof, the 0-4-0 would have a maize cab roof, but be otherwise black.

I might do something with some of the rolling stock, making some custom logo decals for some of them, it's not really necessary to paint them. I won't presume that in the Texian territorial lands that people even bother repainting rolling stock, unless they have time and money to kill, or want to make sure that nobody can easily just run off with their stock. Most of them will have been bought used. I want to have older "old time" stock, not only because I like the look of it, it'll look used and older, but also because they're all smaller; less than 40' long in most cases, which will look better on the railroad anyway.

I'll have stock cars, which I probably won't reletter, flat cars that I also won't reletter. Box cars and little ore cars that I probably will reletter, at least some of them, and maybe some gons and tank cars that I'll reletter. I'll also reletter a few little bobber cabooses. Not sure what I'm going to do with passenger combines; and I probably will mostly have combines rather than passenger and baggage cars, although maybe I'll have one each of those two, and a few combines. Anything else that I need? Maybe some skeleton cars with logs for the T&C. Maybe a handful of unusual cars, like a derrick or something. But probably that'll do it, for the most part.

Tight curves

In my last post, I showed the Nantahala & Smoky Mountain Gorge track plan as a possible basis for the railroad shortline that I'd have in the Grizzly Mountains. I've also got this image of one of the original Gorre & Daphetid track plans (which was actually originally smaller than 4x8 feet). I'll likely flip this both horizontally and vertically, and this is a possible alternative as well.

Neither of these two has a reverse loop. I'm not thrilled with that, because I like the ability to turn trains around without picking them and turning them around manually, but I don't have a lot of potential to do that unless I can squeeze a turntable in there somewhere. In a pinch, if I add a wye-like junction, like there is between the J&SW and BA&W track plans, which I'm also replicating, then I can have trains pull into the BA&W, then back up the other branch of the wye to change direction, of course. It's a bit awkward, but probably better than any other alternative if I need to turn trains around. Maybe I'm overthinking the desire to turn trains around, though. I just don't like trains backing up for long periods, although I do recognize that in real life that did happen a fair bit. But if I'm just trying too hard to add a reverse loop at all cost, that's probably not going to be a great fit either. So I'm also considering the other two Gorre & Daphetid track plans that have a turntable on them. Again, flipped or rotated, possibly.

I should note that the two with a turntable are really the same plan, just slightly redrawn in one case by Linn Westcott to show smoother curves. Given that it's less a schematic and more of just a drawing of the plan, that's fine. 

Again, I know that this isn't the "conventional wisdom" of how to do track plans. One 4x8 is considered bad enough by many in the know, but two connected by a 2x6 or 2x8 bridge is ridiculous. It's also not a great utilization of space, although if you've got a bit shed or barn or something to build it in, then that doesn't really matter. If when it comes time to actually build the Ruritanian Territorial Railroad Commission's two railroads, the Jefferson & Lamar Mountains RR and the ... whatever I call the Grizzly Mountains railroad (I'll need to rename the towns Gorre & Daphetid, if I do indeed use one of those plans) and name the railroad based on those towns, I may not find that my plan is actually feasible. I do need to be able to get behind the railroad to reach it, which is the disadvantage of the 4x8s. There's not really a front or a back; you kind of have to be able to get to all of it. John Olsen made it look like he built a 4x8 that was like a "real" serious railroad, but I'm confident that he couldn't possibly have done so unless his backdrops, at least, were removable so he could get to stuff in the back of the railroad from time to time.

So ideally, that's what I'd do; I'd need at least a good 20x20 foot space to build this in comfortably, and the railroad itself would be 8 feet "tall" from a top down view, and 14 feet wide. But with aisles behind the backdrops, and removable backdrops, I can get to all sides. I can also have removable backdrops that can be reposed if needed to facilitate photography or videography of the layout from any angle, which I like. Although John Olsen seems to hint that that's not what he does; he talks about this railroad as if he just built it and runs it like a normal person, in the other book that I have, A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos, it's clear that his photography is a very involved process that consists of moving all kinds of elements around and posing them specifically for the shot, not necessarily for permanent set-up on the railroad.

In any case, one thing about the 4x8 style railroad is that it is difficult to have curves that are less tight than 18". This is usually fine for the types of locomotives and rolling stock that are on 4x8 foot railroads, although many modelers prefer the bigger locos and bigger cars, so they need more gentle curves (and therefore not 4x8 railroads.) They also prefer the more gentle curves because they believe that they have a greater since of fidelity to the scale of the prototype. 

This is exactly the kind of spergy detail that makes the hobby considerably less fun for most normal people, though. Besides, I think one of the main points at creating the illusion is scale, i.e., you need to scale things down, not replicate them "to scale." A normal sized (to scale) train or building usually looks really big on a model railroad, because model railroads are inherently not to scale. They have to fit in a single room, usually, so they are a scale mile or two long at most. You create the illusion of scale in part by having small elements. Smaller buildings. Small trains, with small equipment. John Olsen understood this pretty intuitively, as did Malcolm Furlow, which is why they deliberately had small stuff. Furlow even went to narrow gauge to make it even smaller, but Olsen used small buildings, often little more than shacks, and small trains; a Heisler was one of this biggest ones, and rarely pulled more than 4-5 cars at a time. If this is a bridge too far for people who have grown up worrying about scale in the wrong way, it's deliberately explainable on my railroad plan; if it's a shortline frontier railroad that is deliberately supposed to have smaller, cheaper locomotives, small mixed trains doing LCL type runs, and even carrying a combine passenger/baggage/mail on most trains, etc. My biggest locos would be stuff like a 2-6-0 camelback or a 4-4-0 Modern.

If I rotate this so that the left edge is on the "top", then I can have the long spur at the bottom curve off the board and connect to the BA&W analog, and that's how I connect. Big mountains would be along the top (left) edge in particular, with Daphetid being a lumber camp rather than a town. If I can divide via scenic blocks of some kind the Gorre area from the turntable area, and they can be two towns, potentially. I'm looking at the bottom of the three right now). If I do the bottom, I don't need that many tracks coming off of the turntable. Two or three max is fine, and more like the San Juan Central paradigm, actually. A big trestle or bridge around the corner at the bottom right would be cool, climbing via steep cliffs to big mountains at the top right and along the entire top edge. That same edge would just be a gigantic cliff below the track level, and then up much higher than it too.

Grizzly Range Branch

I'm having second thoughts about using this broad track plan.

While I am largely still interested in the twisted figure eight which gives the main loop almost double the mainline length, the lack of more than two or three usable spurs or a reverse loop is kind of a turnoff. Also, the one big spur, which I'd kind of thought to be the play where it connects to the Mirabeau connector 2x6 is in completely the wrong place. I'm not longer sure that this is really the basic track plan that I want after all, or if I want to look for alternatives. Like I said, the twisted figure eight double loop is the main attraction of this track plan; other than that, it actually offers very little. Not sure if I think that's enough to keep my interest or not. Then again, the rest of the railroad offers plenty of operational possibilities, if that's what I'm looking for. Perhaps two passing sidings and two small spurs (and one really big one) is worth it if I can instead focus on the scenery, trackways above and behind each other, and some long running distance.

I've got plenty of other 4x8 track plans I can modify, or I can make my own modifications to this one, really.

Here's a few to get started:

The last two are kinda funky. There's almost no chance that I'd ever do the yard with the turntable, but I couldn't resist showing it anyway. Above that are two mirrored but also slightly different takes on the same idea. The bottom one, if I go ahead and close the loop at the top, is a possibility, maybe, although that's still a very weird track plan. The top one, if you ignore the scenic notations, is a possibility, and the one with the desert stuff would have to be rethemed, obviously, but otherwise is a pretty nice alternative. If I went with that, I'd rotate it 90° so that the right edge is at the top. The long spur that's all in the tunnel; I have no idea what the purpose of that even is, so I'd probably cut it short.

Motive Power

Here's a list of some potential locomotive power. I've decided that each of the two 4x8s will be two separate Ruritanian Territorial Railroads; a Lamar Mountains Branch on the first Davis Mountains type 4x8 of terrain, and a Grizzly Range on the more Rocky Mountains type 4x8 railroad. They'll have neighboring offices on the 2x6 connector, and they are somewhat partnered, somewhat rivals; they will share locomotive and yard services. There will also be a third office of a third company; the Ruritanian Territorial Passenger Service, who manage and maintain their own passenger/baggage combination cars that are managed by both the Lamar and Grizzly branches of the greater Ruritanian Territorial Railroad system. Freight can obviously be switched from one to another, depending on where it's going, but passenger cars will also be frequently switched between the two railroads. But the two owners are business partners and sometimes rivals. Secretly, the son of the Lamar Mountains Branch chief and the daughter of the Grizzly Range Branch boss have started dating, however. They are afraid to take their relationship out in the open, fearing the reaction of their fathers, but actually, secretly, both fathers have been wishing that they could marry the two of them together, merge their two little empires, and then retire knowing that their life's work is in good hands. Oh, the irony.

https://www.hobbylinc.com/preiser-couple-walking-model-railroad-figure-ho-scale-28111

Of course, if the Lamar Mountains and Grizzly Ranger Branches combine into a single Ruritanian Territorial Railroad, little would change other than the even more open combination of routes, engines and cars between the two pikes... but realistically, of course, I'd probably most like to run long trains that do a big loop across both of them, if I'm just sitting there running trains. But in the meantime, it gives me the opportunity to do things a bit differently between them. One of them will probably be the standard black locomotives with a silvery front, but in many other countries, and on a few lines in America, painted locomotives weren't necessarily uncommon. In America, they mostly changed to black in the late 1880s because coal became commonplace, which created a lot of black soot and grime. But, perhaps not ironically, the Texas State Railroad still ran some colored locos; one that has an olive green boiler and red roof on the cab is particularly striking to me. Maybe that can be the Grizzly Range colors.

For whatever reason, probably because so few modelers are into the very smaller stuff, getting good small steam locomotives in HO scale isn't very easy. I hope that it's not too hard to convert older engines to DCC, because that would be the best way to do this. But we'll see.

First off, here's a USRA 0-6-0 that is DCC already. There are actually quite a few available, but most of them have sloping tenders. That was a design specifically so these could run switching operations, because it was easier to see around the tender, and its lower capacity wasn't a big deal when you don't leave the yard. But if I'm using small locos like this to haul short run loads, I don't want any slope-backed tenders. Here's one that's got a short run tender.

https://www.amazon.com/Bachmann-53802-0-6-0-Central-System/dp/B097WGHBRQ?sr=8-1&ufe=INHOUSE_INSTALLMENTS%3AUS_IHI_5M_HARDLINES_AUTOMATED

The image below isn't quite right; it's marked for a different railroad and has a slightly different tender, but it's close enough. Better yet, click on the link, of course.

The one below is a Vanderbilt tender, which I'd love to use even more, but it isn't DCC enabled. Like I said; I don't know how hard or expensive it would be to convert it, though. I could have one 0-6-0 with a different tender and different paint job for each of the two RRs.

This one is an old wood-burning affair, but I think it'd be fun to have one between the two.

https://www.amazon.com/Bachmann-51007-STEAM-American-Santa/dp/B097WR9G32?sr=8-8

I also want two Heislers, because there's a Rivarossi 2-truck DCC model available right now. I don't care quite as much about the line, because I'll paint over that and add custom decals, but one has a bonnet stack and one as stovepipe stack. One will belong to each of the lines.

https://www.amazon.com/Rivarossi-Heisler-Locomotive-Railroad-HR2946/dp/B0CBQWCFY1?sr=8-6&ufe=INHOUSE_INSTALLMENTS%3AUS_IHI_5M_HARDLINES_AUTOMATED

https://www.amazon.com/Rivarossi-Heisler-Locomotive-Company-HR2947/dp/B0CBQXD5DT?sr=8-3&ufe=INHOUSE_INSTALLMENTS%3AUS_IHI_5M_HARDLINES_AUTOMATED

The real trick is these older brass models, however. Not only are they really expensive, but they're old; they'll need DCC conversion, if it's even doable. I'd love to give one camelback to each railroad, and there's an 0-4-0 and an 0-6-0 option (actually, others too, but those are what I'd focus on.)

https://www.brasstrains.com/Classic/Product/Detail/180121/HO-Brass-Model-OMI-1511-RDG-Philadelphia-Reading-0-4-0-Camelback-Switcher-Unpainted-1989-Run-M-S-Models

https://www.brasstrains.com/Classic/Product/Detail/180763/HO-Brass-Model-OMI-1500-CNJ-Jersey-Central-B-3a-0-6-0-Camelback-Switcher-9-23-Unpainted-1989-Run-M-S-Models

And finally, two other small geared steam; a Climax and a Shay; I'd love to have one for each.

https://www.brasstrains.com/Classic/Product/Detail/175636/HO-Brass-Model-PFM-KL-LC-St-Regis-Paper-Company-Class-C-2-Truck-Logging-Climax-28-Custom-Mid-1960-s-Run-United---Atlas

https://www.brasstrains.com/Classic/Product/Detail/179703/HO-Brass-Model-United-Caddo-River-Lumber-Co-2-Truck-Shay-11-Unpainted-1984-Run

I've made my locomotive power into quite the expensive endeavor, though; I'd easily spend $3-4,000 on engines alone, plus whatever time (and additional money) needed to convert some of them to DCC by adding decoders, painting, weathering and getting them actually ready to run. Yikes. But when I'm done, both lines have four locomotives each, plus an extra old-fashioned 4-4-0 floating around between them. If I could get a JW Bowker I'd almost like that even better; a bit smaller than the old late 1800s 4-4-0s, but similar look and vintage. I could also go with a foreign loco; something like Britain's City of Truro built in 1903, so it doesn't look so old-fashioned, but repainted to look more American might be interesting. After all, this is the Ruritanian railroad system; they're not necessarily any more American than Canada is, because it's a territorial extension of an independent Republic of Texas. They'd be culturally probably even more American than the Canadians, because they do have the history of having their ancestors fight for America in the Revolutionary War, but politically, economically and socially and most importantly technologically they can go their own way in any way that I presume to want them to.

Of course, that assumes that I can find an HO scale City of Truro. That may be easier said than done given that the loco was a very specifically British affair, and Britain is a heavy user of the OO scale rather than HO scale. The track gauge might be the same, but the models are not.

Anyway, that's enough for now. When I come back, maybe some discussion on rolling stock...

New plans...

How things change! Since I last posted on this blog, I've relocated out of state to a new job, moved into a rental for the time being, (because we haven't sold our old house yet, so we can't afford to buy another one! Plus, we didn't want to feel rushed in buying a house in a new area that we didn't know yet) and my plans, vague as they were, to actually start modeling anything are obviously put on hold a couple more years. I can't start a model railroad in a rental house! That said, I'm still pretty interested in getting into this hobby when I do have time and space... space being a more important limiter than time at the current time; I need a house with a room that I can use as combination train room and workshop. I guess maybe I can use a garage as a workshop, since my current location is a more clement climate than the one that I'm vacating. But also more humid, and hot during the summer. Blegh! 

I'm still convinced that the way to go is to use the same basic idea as John Olsen's famous Jerome & Southwestern project railroad from the early 80s (originally Model Railroader articles, but then combined in book format in the mid-80s; I've had the book since then). It's a 4x8 railroad in a rough and tumble barely post-cowboy Arizona mining mountain-desert town, with a 2x6 urban waterfront expansion. I actually have no intention of changing the track plan other than to possibly extend the 2x6 into 2x7 or 2x8 to allow me to create arcs where the tracks can connect to another 4x8 trackplan from another older source called the Nantahala & Smokey Mountain Gorge RR. I can't remember the source; I just found a jpg of the trackplan in pretty stylized form. With just a minor bit of change to get the two 4x8s to connect via the 2x6 (or so) spur, I've got a potentially interesting plan, although I'll need a relatively large room to put it in. On its longest edge, the railroad is 12 feet long, and looks something like this: orange being the original J&S, green being the BA&W connector and brown being the N&SMG trackplans.

However, of course, I'm going to retheme all three sections. The orange section won't be in and around Jerome Arizona, it'll be a Ruritanian Trans-Pecos Texas. That's still desert/mountain, but it will look significantly different, with dagger yuccas, pinyon/juniper stuff going on in the mountains, and instead of saguaro cactus, it'll have prickly pear and cholla. All of which I need to figure out how to model still, by the way, although the yuccas seem the easiest to come up with a solution for. I'll also need to figure out how to do backdrops. I'll probably have to convert some photographs. Maybe I'll reach out to the guy who made this one and see if I can get a high resolution version, and cut off or cover the road...

I've taken my own picture of this mountain, but neither the time of year nor the time of day was right. Maybe I just need to get a decent camera and spend a day or two in the area in the late fall and take my own pictures. Hopefully I get sunnier days than this one; although I like the dramatic cloud shadows as an artistic touch, it's less appealing for a backdrop. This is up at higher elevation, so it's a bit less deserty, lacking cactus or other spiny desert plants. I'll still have the same two towns, although renamed to Jefferson and Davis from Clarksdale and Dos Hermanos, and I'll still have a copper mine in the mountains. Jefferson will also be a west Texas town with some stock pens and oil tanks as little businesses in town.

The green section will be a bayou, with Spanish moss, cypress trees (including the knees) and all that jazz. However, the section that abuts the desert will first be the town of Mirabeau, allowing for a compressed transition from desert to bayou. This is where the railroad headquarters will be, including the only modeled locomotive services (other than water towers in both Jefferson and Davis) although keep in mind that in my alternative history Ruritanian version of this part of America, there's no corporatized and consolidated railroad or other businesses run by robber barons or hugely wealthy magnates. That never came to pass in Ruritania, which is a fairly autonomous extension of the Republic of Texas which never joined the Union in my version of reality; smaller "mom & pop" businesses, including local refineries, distributors and even the railroad itself are the order of the day, so I've got pretty laid-back and ad hoc shipping stuff; lots of LCL docks and combined trains, with a single passenger car and a few freight cars of various sorts (mining hoppers, stock cars, box cars, tank cars) all in small 30' or so sizes, making up small trains of rarely more than 4-5 cars per train, pulled by a little 0-4-0, 0-6-0 or geared locomotive like a Heisler or Climax.

The brown 4x8 will be Rocky Mountains style, with mining, logging and more of the LCL type stuff going on. I'll also have lumber as an industry that complements the logging, although again with a small mom & pop sawmill, not a big corporatized large one. One key element that John Olsen got very right on his railroad is that in order to facilitate the compression needed to make a landscape seem big and extensive when it is, in fact, quite small, is that everything has to be small. There can't be large buildings, large locomotives, large cars or long trains. Most building are little more than tiny shacks in reality, or equally modest little one-room saloons, tiny depot docks, stockyards that only hold half a dozen animals, etc. and trains need to be very short, made up of smaller, old-fashioned cars, and pulled by tiny little locomotives. Not only do I prefer this anyway for many reasons, but it also makes the whole thing pull together better. Anyway, the Rocky Mountain plan is the least developed, but I've got lots of other classic railroads I can look at for inspiration on what kinds of business to include, including the San Juan Central, which is another project railroad who's book I have, and even the Gorre & Daphetid itself (the pride and joy of my model RR books; although the binding is terrible.)

To save on cost and complexity, I'm actually thinking about not worrying about DCC, and just going with good old fashioned DC. As long as I don't have more than a train or two at a time on the railroad, which I wouldn't really need to except maybe for an occasional photo op, it shouldn't be too hard. Although if I can find DCC onboard locos of the type I want that I don't have to convert by adding my own decoders, then I guess maybe I'll be OK with DCC.

Also, unlike any other description I've ever seen, although probably actually more like the real situation with the J&S, I want to have removable or prop-uppable backdrops, so I can take photos or video of any section of the model railroad while working to make it look realistic and not have "the real world" showing, like a lot of very amateurish youtube videos do. I'm quite impressed by what I read in the book A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos featuring four modelers, including Olsen (and Frary, Scoles and Furlow) that Olsen talked quite a bit about the idea that taking pictures of his layout was as much a part of his hobby as building it. Setting up scenes with temporary backdrops, temporary lighting, temporary figures and more to give it more life is a bit part of the whole deal. Frary was, if anything, even more extreme about setting up temporary "dioramas" to photograph on his layout. 

And, of course, John Allen was himself a professional photographer, and was the first to approach model railroading from a photographer's point of view.

RSARR Update

Well, I haven't done much with this blog in a while. That's OK. Model Railroading is my armchair hobby for the time being. Although that may change sooner than you'd think; my daughter is getting married at the end of the month, and we'll become effectively empty nesters. With the exception of two college-age boys who will technically have their permanent address at our house, but who won't actually be here much. They're both out of state out West. Lucky chumps.

When she leaves, we'll do a lot of reorganization in to our "semi-empty-nester mode" housing situation. Her bedroom will become a kind of small office or library. A bunch of stuff in the basement (where I work, most of the time) will be thrown out, hopefully including a bench set that nobody uses and a treadmill nobody has used in years, which will facilitate making a lot of space available in the back half of the basement living area. This could potentially be a railroad area, if I decide that I'm ready to commit to that. I mean, don't hold your breath. It'll be months before the house is ready to even entertain making that space, and I haven't even talked to my wife yet about whether or not that's how we want to use the space either. And getting set up with a railroad isn't super expensive, but it ain't cheap either, and our budget may well be recovering from this wedding for a year or more. Not to mention other home improvement projects that desperately need doing. New carpets. New bathrooms. New siding.  New drywall in the basement, etc.

Rather than looking at 2023 as the year I start modeling, I see it as likely the year that we start staging the house in such a way that modeling could happen in 2024-5 at the earliest. 

I'm also thinking about scaling back my ambitious plans for three 4x8s. Certainly that will never fit in our current house, and it looks like we're going to be staying here longer than we thought; another good decade at the least, and maybe closer to two before we can think about moving into a retirement house somewhere that we really want to live unfettered from the need to live near work. I'm now thinking two 4x8s connected via a 2xn bridge (probably less than 8 feet like I had originally planned. Four or maybe a little more seems more doable) into a loose upside down U shape. I'm still very interested in a Trans-Pecos West Texas desert environment (possibly with more dramatic than realistic canyons and cliffs) on the Jerome & Southwestern trackplan for the first 4x8. The bridging section will have a more "urban" railtown with a bayou built in just for the scenic variety, and the second 4x8 will feature classic Rocky Mountain-like scenery. I haven't decided on a trackplan, but this is a good suggestion of a place to build off of. I have others too, though.

I like how this one has the loop doing some crazy things rather than just going around in a circle. This is like a folded in on itself figure eight. The loop is much longer than it appears at first glance.

That big spur going off into the corner could even be adapted as one of the connecting tracks from the bridging section. I like the idea of it not necessarily just connecting to the loop right away in a predictable fashion.

In other words, it's two 4x8 railroads connected to each other by a bridging section, with slightly different themes. The desert theme will be focused on stock cars, mining, and LTL and team track stuff, with oil being an industry referenced, but slightly off stage.

The Rocky Mountain section will have logging and mining and by logging I also mean lumber processing, i.e., a sawmill, even if it's a small mom and pop one along with, of course, LTL service. The LTL is a big part of the whole idea; Ruritanian America is non-corporatized, and businesses are smaller and usually privately owned. Railroads are also smaller and privately owned, but have to handle a more diverse bunch of smaller businesses shipping smaller loads.

That said, strict realism is hardly one of my goals. Long time modelers will probably say that such small, private short-line railroads would use narrow gauge and low profile rails. Screw that. I'm using Code 100 standard gauge track because it's cheaper, more readily available, and easier to maintain.  And THAT is exactly the spirit of the non-corporatized railroads, even if the result is... somewhat unexpected. That said, I'm not thrilled with the kind of model railroading Karens who run around worrying about rail height and other functions like that, as I've said before. 

I may cut down my planned 5-6 locos to just two or three, actually. The Heisler is readily available, if the Climax seems to constantly be out of stock everywhere. I can get it on the used market, along with Shays, but because they're older, they don't seem to be DCC compatible. Maybe that's OK. With a smaller layout and fewer locos, and the likelihood that I'm the only person who will ever run trains on it, other than for staged photo ops, what do I really need more than one train at a time for? Why not just have a regular and simpler and easier DC system with a booster power pack or two because of the size? I'll need to do some electrical blocking anyway for a reverse loop or two.

And if I don't care anymore about DCC, maybe I can even downgrade one of my planned 0-6-0s to an 0-4-0. Or maybe I'll have one of each and the Heisler. Or... I dunno. I am finding that DC is still more common, in spite of the fact that all of the magazine discussion is all in on DCC. Given my scope, I'm really starting to lean in to DC vs DCC. Much cheaper, simpler.

Anyway, I'll talk some more in the next few weeks, I hope, about the second loop and whatever changes to the bridging section that I intend to make. If I cut the bridging section down from a planned 2x8 to a 2x3 or 2x4, I'll have to reduce it, obviously, and it'll have less switching and yard-like options and more just getting from one railroad to the next as well as less ambitious scenic goals. But that'll certainly fit better, and will probably be a necessity for real life, if I'm assuming that I'm designing a railroad that I could actually build in a few years.

An obvious thing here is that my pseudo-Appalachian loop will be cut completely. There won't be any smaller, rounder, forested Eastern mountain ranges, just the more jagged, wilder Western Rocky Mountain-like ranges. Although the mountains will be more in the backdrop than in the layout itself, of course—even in a mountain themed railroad, actual really big mountains, cliffs and canyons are naturally constrained by what you can do. John Allen did more than almost anyone else with scenery that literally went from the floor to the ceiling. I certainly won't do that much. 

But losing the Appalachian area, which is the obvious coal-mining region, is why I'm on the fence about if I'm going to have coal mines or not.  If I don't, that's OK. Not every railroad needs a coal mine, even if it runs on coal. There are coal mines out  west, but it's generally lower quality coal that's strip-mined, not Appalachian-style mines. But I'll see what I end up wanting to do about that. I don't need a million industries.  A couple per loop and one on the bridging section gives me plenty to work with, if I also have team tracks and LCL docks with old-fashioned depot shipping. Add to that the possibility of a passenger car or two in some trains, and I've got plenty of activities modeled to keep the trains busy.