My Model Railroads – Page 2 – Trains @ Station Studios

Inspirational 7/8″ Scale Railways

My previous garden railway (pictured above) provided me a lot of enjoyment over its four-year life. It was simple in design, quick to construct, easy to maintain and quick to dismantle when we finally moved. It was a great first outdoor layout for me but as I look to design and build the MQR, I am planning on setting my sights higher.

I’ve been a member of the 7/8″ scale forum, The SE Lounge, since 2007. Over the years, members have documented the creation and development of their layouts. Here are three that have captured my imagination and will provide inspiration for the MQR design.

Rich Chiodo’s Isle of Shoals Tramway

If you are not familiar with Rich’s layout, I strongly encourage to go through all 23 pages of the post linked above. The IST is a wonderfully executed garden railway that fully captures British narrow gauge.

Things I like about the IST:

The brick tub supporting and surrounding the IST is just gorgeous; it creates a nice edge which photographs well. However, Rich mentioned that it took a long time to construct. 30″ feels about the right amount of elevation to design for.
Rich’s design allows access to all parts of the layout.
Low track-to-scenery ratio.
Very simple track work: wide curves, little straight track, 5 switches in total.

Things I’d do differently:

I would like to have the option to run both point-to-point and continuously.
I am on the fence when it comes to the “pit”. It is a sunken area in the middle of the layout where people can sit and enjoy the layout from a different angle.

Chris Bird’s Summerlands Light Railway

Chris has documented his layout extensively on YouTube.

Things I like about the SLR:

Once again, a very simple track work: wide curves, little straight track, 6 switches in total.
Many small scenes that photograph or video well and make the layout seem much bigger than it is.
Because Chris has included a reserve loop, he can run the SLR in an out-and-back configuration.
The layout is elevated along the main operating side; looking at photographs, I would estimate the elevation difference to be about 15-18″.

Things I’d do differently:

I’m unlikely to have tunnels on the MQR.
No passing loop on the mainline.

Rob Bennett’s Weston Railway

Rob Bennett is another well-known 7/8″ scale modeler from the UK. As I understand it, his Weston Railway was originally at ground level but was elevated in the late 2000’s. I mostly seen Rob’s layout through the various YouTube videos he has made.

Things I like about the Weston:

The two sets of spurs running off to the lower right give Rob the option of running point-to-point. They also serve as steam-up bays.

Things I’d do differently:

The Weston is quite a bit more complicated in track design compared to the IST and SLR: I count 16 switches in Rob’s diagram. I expect the MQR design to come in around 10 switches maximum.

Design Flavour for the MQR

Now that we are back in Canada full-time and know where we will be living long-term, I’ve initiated the planning process for the 7/8″ scale Marchlyn Quarry Railway. To start, I’ve pulled together a number of photos of the prototype Penrhyn Quarry Railway for reference and flavour.

Coed-y-Parc

This was the south end of the Penrhyn Quarry Railway. Here the PQR connected with the slate quarry. Coed-y-Parc was also the location of the main slate dressing mills, the sheds for the steam engines as well as a small yard for marshalling the trains to Port Penrhyn. Coed-y-Parc featured a beautiful road bridge splitting the Coed-y-Parc yards in two. It also featured an impressive slate wall on the south side of its property that ran the length of the yard.

Hendurnpike Crossing

Hendurnpike featured a picturesque road crossing. The original crossing guard’s shed was still standing in 2013!

Hendurnpike Crossing, 23rd February 2013

Tregarth

Tregrath was the location of the main passing loop about halfway between Coed-y-Parc and Port Penrhyn.

Port Penrhyn

Port Penrhyn was the north end of the PQR and where the finished slate was transferred to boats and ships for export. Port Penrhyn was also served by the standard gauge British Railway, making for some interesting trackwork.

How To: Google Maps and 3rdPlanIt

The availability of digital satellite photos through services like Google Maps and Bing have yielded a wealth of information for the modern age modeler. One of the challenges though is how to leverage satellite photos inside powerful layout design tools like 3rdPlanIt. I’ve been working through this over the past few days and feel I’ve arrived at a good efficient process.

Let’s see how this works in practice. I’ve selected the Ingredion siding (formerly CASCO) in Port Colborne, Ontario on the Trillium Railway as an example. The Google Map is available here.

The first step is to get a screen capture from Google Maps of the area you want to model. It almost always pays to make the screen capture as big as possible. I use the Snipping Tool that comes with Windows with the Window Snip option to get the whole browser window. Go to Google Maps in satellite mode and zoom into the area you want to capture. I try to get down to a consistent zoom level which makes the next steps a little easier. The most important thing to remember is to get the little scale that Google puts on every map into the screen capture (using the Window Snip option should ensure this happens). On the screen capture below, the scale shows 20 meters since I did the screen capture in Europe:

Step 1: Get Screen Capture from Google Click to Enlarge — Step 1: Get a Screen Capture from Google
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Using the Save option in the Windows Snipping Tool, save the screen capture as a jpg and note the size of the jpg; on my system, the size of my monitor gives 1920 x 1168 pixel screen captures.

Next, open 3rdPlanIt and start with a fresh file working in feet and inches. The 20’x20′ default room is a good one to start with. It is also good practice to add a new layer to hold the aerial photograph:

Step 2: Set up an Aerial Photo Layer Click to Enlarge — Step 2: Set up an Aerial Photo Layer
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The next step is to convert the dimensions in the 3rdPlanIt file to model scale units. There is a checkbox on the File/Settings/Units that you must click. This converts the dimensions in the 3rdPlanIt file to real-world units. For an HO scale drawing, every dimension gets multiplied by 87.

Step 3 Convert to Model Scale Click to Enlarge — Step 3 Convert to Model Scale
Click to Enlarge

Now with the Aerial Photo layer active, select the “Place Image” tool. Starting at the (0,0) corner (the lower left), click and drag your cursor until the size of the photo is about 19200″ by 11680″. This is the proportion of the jpg file multiplied by 10 and should just about fill the 20′ dimension. It is critical to keep the proportion of the jpg when drawing the object; once the image is placed in the right proportion, we can drag the upper right corner to bring the image to the final dimensions. Working in HO scale here and with the level of zoom I typically work, I find that I need to make the jpg image about 22 feet wide:

Step 4 Resize Photo Click to Enlarge — Step 4 Resize Photo
Click to Enlarge

Once I’m at this point, I switch the units to meters to align with the Google Map scale and switch the layer to the Main Layer. Now, zoom into the Google scale section and the bottom right. Select the Draw Track and draw a piece of track from one end of the scale to the either. Now check the length of this track segment in the track detail box in the top right. If the two are close (say 21 meters compared to Google Maps’ 20 meter scale), then you are done. If they are significantly different, select the placed image again and grabbing the same upper right corner, increase or decrease the size of the image accordingly and redraw the check track segment again:

Step 5 Check Scale Click to Enlarge — Step 5 Check Scale
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Now you can return to the Main Layer and start drawing track right over the Google map. I usually start by putting turnouts down first. Next to be drawn are the end of the various spurs. I then use the SoftTrack connect tool to tie them together. If the Google Map satellite photo has railcars on the spurs, I’ll often add a couple of them from the Rolling Stock library to confirm I’ve got the scale right:

6 Draw on the Aerial Photo Click to Enlarge — Step 6 Draw on the Aerial Photo
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From here, you can just group the trackage in the Main Layer together, copy it and paste it into your layout design file as a Layout Design Element.

What’s nice about this approach is that it gives you a good feel of the track arrangements on the prototype and how much space would be required to model things faithfully. For the Ingredion spur, the prototype would take about 12 feet to model faithfully, a luxury many of us would not have. However, from here, we can build up our strategies to selectively compress scenes like this one for modeling.

Back Story on the Marchlyn Quarry Railway

After reviewing my last few posts here at Trains @ Station Studios, I realized that while I talked a lot about engines and rolling stock, I have not done a good job of explaining the back story of the Marchlyn Quarry Railway. So let’s fix that now.

I first ran across the narrow gauge slate railways of Wales back in 1988. I lived in London, England for three years in the late 1980’s and my cousins from Canada visited for a couple of weeks. While we spent a lot of time seeing the sights in London, we rented a car and drove to Wales for a week. We started in the south of Wales in the Brecon Beacons area and made our way north. When I learned that there was a narrow gauge railway running down from the hills at Blaenau Ffestiniog to the seaside at Porthmadog, I convinced the others that we had to go for a ride on it. It was a memorable experience.

After I returned to Canada, my modelling interests moved onto other things like the PM&TCo. But as I started to get more and more interested in garden and live steam railways when we lived in Texas, it was not long before I was coming across the Great Little Trains of Wales and the myriad of opportunities to use them as a theme for my next garden railway. My purchase of a 7/8″ scale live steam engine and three slate cars back in 2011 sealed the deal.

I thought about going pretty much fully freelance in the design but have always liked basing my model railroads closely on real prototypes. So I started to investigate the various slate railways that ran into the 1950’s. The most well-known four were:

I made the following Google Map to show where each of these railways where and the slate quarries each of them served (you can expand the map to full screen and zoom in to see the details more closely):

There is much to recommend to use any of the four as a basis for a garden railway, but in the end I think the Penrhyn Quarry Railway had the most interesting combination of operations, engines, rolling stock and buildings. To give myself some room to take inspiration from the other three railways, I chose not to use the Penrhyn Quarry name. Instead during my research I found that there was a short-lived slate quarrying operation lying just to the south of the main Penrhyn quarry. It was named the Marchlyn Quarry and so I chose to use it as the name of my 7/8″ scale railway.

So there you go: the back story to the Marchlyn Quarry Railway. There are several good online resources on the Penrhyn Quarry Railway which I’ll share in the next few weeks.

Rolling Stock for the MQR

After returning from the OnTraXS 2013 model railway show, I started to think about doing some modeling again. I have been putting off some decisions until the eminent decision of where my next assignment will be, but decided last week to just get on with things.

I placed an order with Acme Engineering for a set of Welsh-style rolling stock including ten slate wagons, three slab cars and one workman’s coach:

Acme Engineering Penrhyn Open Workman Car — Acme Engineering Penrhyn Open Workman Coach

Added to the three slate wagons purchased back in 2011, I now have a decent sized roster of rolling stock for my 7/8n2 garden railway:

Now all I need to do is set up a workbench to build them all.

New (to me) 7/8″ Scale Engine

I was fortunate this weekend to surf over to the SE Lounge website and caught sight of a “for sale” announcement for a 7/8″ scale live steam locomotive and some rolling stock. The seller was Canadian and so I made contact and made arrangements to purchase it all. The photo above shows the engine, a Simply 7/8ths Baldrig kit on a Accucraft Eldrig chassis. The previous owner named it “Oakshaak” after the name used by the ancient Mi’kmaq for the New Brunswick town he lives in.

I also got three slate wagons as part of the deal:

New Engine, New Scale

So I didn’t jump on buying the Roundhouse Katie back a year ago. Rather today I made a purchase of the 7/8″ scale Davenport made by Back to Bay 6 in the UK. I follow the SE Lounge Forum rather religiously and have always been impressed by the size and quality of the 7/8″ scale model presented there. I don’t have too much invested in 1:20.3 rolling stock at the moment and several people have kitbashed the Regner Konrad into 7/8″ scale. Here’s one example done by Rob Bennett:

PM&TCo in Free-MOn30?

While surfing around the blog entries on the Model Railroad Hobbyist website, I came across a link to the Upper Canada and Algonquin Railway group, who are building an On30 modular layout based on the Free-Mo standard. Unlike other modular systems like Ntrak, Free-Mo sets some basic requirements, particularly around the module height and the module-to-module interface, and then lets the module designer a great deal of latitude on all other aspects. Prototype modelers have taken to the standard very quickly as it allows them to reproduce real track patterns very accurately. It also allows a lot more creativity removing the “slot-car” look of other older module systems.

I’ve always liked the Free-Mo concept especially now that I don’t have room for a full layout. I could build a couple of modules and participate when I’m around and store the modules away when I’m in the Netherlands. In addition, with Bachmann’s recent releases of On30 locomotives including Shays, Climaxes, 2-6-0’s, 2-8-0’s and 4-4-0’s, there are a lot of possibilities to mimic the Key Valley’s locomotive roster in On30.

Welcome

I’ve taken the opportunity to update many of the research pages on the prototype Key Valley Railway. You can find all the posts on the KVR here.

If you are looking for posts on my moth-balled On3/On30 Pakesley Mill and Timber Company, please use this link.

If you are looking for posts on our first (and also moth-balled) garden railway, the Lost Hollow Railway, please use this link.

’08 on the Lost Hollow Railway

March 8: The first version of the Lost Hollow Railway has been decommissioned due to a job-related move. I still hope to make it out to the various steam-ups in the southeast Texas area over the next few months and rebuild the Lost Hollow Railway at our next place.

I learned many things on my first garden railway:

The hardiplank roadbed system I used worked great for the soil here in Houston. Everything was rock solid and I had no problems with track alignment. Thanks to John Frank for his advice in this area. Details on the hardiplank roadbed system are available here. My only issue was keeping the purely cosmetic ballast in place on top of the hardiplank.
I put ground zero too low. I should have raised it about 1-2″ more than I did. I had some problems with the lowest level terrain getting filled in with earth from higher points of the layout.
I should have built retaining walls between the the upper and lower mainlines at several key places. In the center section of the layout, even though the upper and lower mainlines were separated by only 3 inches in vertical height and about 9-12 inches horizontally, I had difficulties keeping the earth on the upper mainline from running down onto the lower mainline. A retaining wall or crib system would have helped.
Switches were mostly unnecessary for this live steam layout. The small radius Aristocraft ones that I used were probably too small anyways.
We should have put down a weed/plant barrier in the loop sections of the layout to get a handle on the weeds. The layout got very weedy in the last couple of years.