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For an inspiring prototype end-of-line layout,
see "Erick,
Oklahoma" under Real Places - Standard Gauge.
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Rural "End of the
Line"
 A popular setting for micro layouts is the "end of the
branch line" at a small, rural town. A good example is GordonAvis's Fairweather
Branch Line, a U.S. HO switching/shunting line in 47"x14" (119x36 cm).
Gordon lives in Jersey, the Channel Islands, and operates this little layout on his
back porch when the weather is fine -- and thus the name!
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And demonstrating how one good idea can beget another, here's an aerial view of Jack
Trollope's Two Nooks Railway, which was inspired by the Fairweather. Jack
added about 8 inches of length and one extra siding track, to come up with his version
of this excellent compact switching layout.
Even before scenery was built, Jack reports that shunting cars in response to randomly
drawn switch lists was an engrossing and very enjoyable game. The "end of the
line" layout can provide a wide assortment of operating challenges -- remarkable
for such a small layout!
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Termini to Share
Often in these pages, we have referred to layouts
that can be "set in many countries." Just how do you do that? Here's an
example of a good starter layout, made with sectional track, that we'll show how
to adapt to both British and U.S. practice.
Let's start with Wyemouth, set somewhere
in southwestern England. This is a sleepy little country terminus, sometime in the
past 100 years. The track plan is a basic one, taking full advantage of the space-saving
abilities of wye ("Y") turnouts. The layout manages to squeeze a decent
operating terminus into a 1x3 foot space, using four wyes. (A small apology to my
British friends -- this particular plan was designed using U.S. Atlas Code 100 Custom
Line trackage -- virtually the same plan is easy to assemble using Peco or Hornby
set track.)
Trains are delivered by a removable cassette at the left, and enter the scene through
a small grove of trees. Depending on the era modeled, passenger traffic could consist
of a push-pull autotrain, or a more modern DMU . Goods trains would be relatively
short here at the end of the branch, and most shunting is of cattle, coal, or general
goods vans.
Scenically, Wyemouth can be as rural as you like -- but if desired, there's plenty
of room for urban development along the visible trackage. A row of terrace houses
is shown as an example. Alternatively, the space at the front of the layout could
become a corner of a busy harbour, and Wyemouth station could serve a cross-Channel
ferry operation.
Exactly the same layout, transported to the U.S.,
becomes Wye River City, a bustling industrial town somewhere in the Midwest
(or, if you prefer, it could be a Chesapeake Bay port or a Western industrial park
at the end of a branch line). Here the ever-useful cassette feeds trains to the layout
under a crossover bridge between factory buildings. Passenger service is provided
by a single car -- either a gas-electric or a Budd RDC, depending on era.
Freight is the main operating attraction here, and there are plenty of spots to shunt
a variety of cars -- from factories big and small to a sizeable grain terminal (essential
in a Midwest layout). With a limited runaround capacity, and the need to clear the
main for commuter car arrivals every hour or so, the freight conductor's job is likely
to involve some head-scratching!
Atlas Custom Line track sections required for either plan: 280 Wye - 4; 150
9In. Straight - 1; 822 6In. Straight - 1; 823 3In. Straight - 4; 847 Snap-Track Assortment
- 1; 834 1/2 18In. Radius - 1; 835 1/3 18In. Radius - 2. Basic track plan and partlist
were generated using "RailModeller,"
a new and attractive planning program for the Macintosh.
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A Tribute to E. L. Moore That You
Can Build
E. L. Moore was a genial North Carolinian modeler
who had a knack for creating HO buildings from inexpensive materials. One of his
most memorable projects was the terminal for his own backwoods-shortline layout,
the Elizabeth Valley RR. Above is an artist's impression of this terminal yard, adapted
from a photograph in E.L.'s article about it in the January 1967 issue of Model
Railroader magazine. The article also included plans for all the buildings!
The terminal was designed around an impressive brick engine house that he acquired
"through considerable labor not unmixed with pleasure". It's written up
in the March 1967 issue of Model Railroader. E.L. didn't have room to add
a proper engine terminal to his EVRR, so he built an addition and included a whole
yard, with engine-service facilities, turntable and roundhouse, and industrial switching.
To the best of my knowledge no plan of the 1900-era backwoods yard was ever published
-- so I have drawn up a conjectural version of the yard that's easy to build in micro-layout
size! Here it is (notice that I had to cut a few corners to make its area less than
four square feet!):
All the buildings are scaled from E.L.'s drawings.
If you add another four inches to the width, you can have full-sized models of all
of them. Track is Atlas Custom Line, but the 8" turn-of-the-century turntable
will have to be scratchbuilt. Note that the yard can be smaller than usual, as 1900-era
locos and cars were considerably shorter than present-day stock.
For operations, you'll need a cassette or extension track (or the remainder of your
layout) attached to the left hand end of this plan. A runaround would be handy for
arriving locos to use in leaving their trains and heading for the service facilities.
But alas! E. L. didn't include that capability in his model. So a switch engine will
need to be permanently stationed at the terminal, to "pull the consist"
and help road locos escape when they pull into the Storage Track (as one has just
done in the picture above).
E.L. started designing and building HO structures after his 60th birthday. During
the 1960's and 1970's he built, photographed and wrote magazine articles about dozens
of structures, appearing virtually every month in one magazine or another, right
up to his death in 1979. Rivalling this shortline terminal as his most famous project
was his "exploding gunpowder factory" that he actually blew up for a photograph,
using gunpowder from another of his hobbies, firing muzzle loaders.
A number of his models were converted into plastic building kits, notably by AHM,
and so there are still quite a few HO layouts around the country housing E.L. Moore
structures. The originals of many of them still exist, as he often gave them to friends
and fellow modelers.
Where can you get plans for all these buildings? The terminal yard buildings are
all in Model Railroader for January and March 1967. To find other buildings,
search "Moore, E.L." in the online Model Train Magazine Index. Copies of back issues are available from Paul Gibson at
RailPub, or from the A. C. Kalmbach Memorial Library at NMRA Headuarters. The Kalmbach Library folks will also
send you photocopies of any particular article for a reasonable fee. You don't have
to be a member to use their services.
The "Spumoni Country Estate", conveniently located right next to the tracks,
was written up in the Railroad Model Craftsman for July 1955. In the drawing
above, you can just see Mrs. Spumoni hanging up the washing, in the lower right corner.
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A Pair of Passenger Primers
Keith Addenbrooke, from Coventry, England, has taken
a couple fairly conventional ideas, shaken them up a bit, and put them together to
form a pair of interesting beginner's micro layouts that are designed primarily for
passenger operations! They're both made in three sections, each 24x8 inches -- so
both layouts total 6 feet long and 8 inches deep. Track is OO/HO standard gauge using
stock commercial turnouts and sectional or flexible track pieces.
The first layout, Upper Town Station, represents
the "end of the line" at a medium-sized town. The station, modeled in "low
relief" at the left end, has a two-sided platform so two trains can be served
at once. The design is intended to use passenger trains that are 29 inches long.
A British example might be an "old time" train headed by a tender locomotive,
say for the UK Great Western Railway the Hornby County Class 4-4-0 and two 57’ clerestory
coaches. A U.S. equivalent might be an aging road switcher and a dusty 60-foot coach
and combine pair.
Trains enter from the concealed fiddle yard at the upper right and pull into one
of the platform tracks. After the passengers have alighted, a yard engine pulls the
coaches off the road loco, freeing it to head for the service tracks and turntable
(offstage in the fiddle yard). The goat then replaces the coaches in the platform
track, and eventually their loco returns, freshened and turned, to haul them back
whence they came.
At some point in this continuing cycle, a goods (freight) train arrives in town and
switches the industries at the far right (your choice of what they are), gathers
up any outgoing freight, and leaves town. Naturally the timetable will be arranged
so that two passenger trains will be town at once, severely challenging the capacity
of this busy little terminus!
Keith also notes, "Another idea is to fold the board horizontally, merging the
Foldingham and the Folding WayTerminal
styles from other plans to create a two-foot square. This method allows a high level
platform and scenic divide in front of the fiddle yard siding, as well as other features
such as signals to be left in situ, the whole going into a covered storage box, perhaps
with a drawer for rolling stock under the layout."
The second layout, Lower Town Station, is
a country station or branch terminus at a very small town. There are considerably
more structures and scenery, and less track. Operation is considerably simpler. Only
one passenger train at a time can come to town from the fiddle yard, and the freight
must wait until the passenger train leaves.
Lower Town Station uses only two turnouts, and offers a lot of room for scenery
detailing! Only two locomotives are required -- a road engine and a switcher to pull
the coaches clear and free the road engine to disappear off to the turntable down
the line a ways (in the fiddle yard). Train size is still set at 29 inches long.,
and the right hand side can be arranged in many ways to provide interesting industrial
switching.
Both these little lines are easy to build, using standard commercial track components
and readily available rolling stock. They're adaptable to representing an operating
railway on either side of the Atlantic, and probably in many other parts of the world
as well. Both of these designs are ideal to give a beginner in micro layouts a chance
to experience the amazing amount of operation that can be had in an area of only
four square feet! Then, when the operating session is over, both layouts can be quickly
and easily folded up into a two-foot square, packed in their cartons, and stored
away.
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