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.