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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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 Posted - 07/03/2007 : 06:58:20 AM
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I thought I'd inflict on... er, share with everyone my layout construction saga for my in-process Burlington layout, set in the mid-1930s to mid-1940s in Wyoming.
A lot of this stuff is on my website, but certainly not all of it.
I'm going to start at the beginning, with development of the plan for the layout, and add a new "chapter" once or twice a week.
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/03/2007 : 07:22:52 AM
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So, how did I choose the Burlington in Wyoming? Simple - I grew up there, and remember seeing the Burlington's trains as we traveled around the state. Except for Cheyenne, where I was born and attended high school (and did NOT live in the intervening years), all the trains near where we lived were either CB&Q or Chicago & North Western. So that's what I ultimately settled on modeling. But it wasn't so easy getting there...
The track plan and concept developed over years, sometimes in my mind, and sometimes in spare rooms and garages around the country as I've moved to and fro.
The basic concept of the layout (a simply-modeled junction from a transcontinental rail line that is otherwise unseen staging, tying into a modeled division of a line into Wyoming) first took shape in my planning in about 1984, when I was living in Lompoc California. I built a U-shaped garage layout that never got to the scenery stage before it was dismantled for a move.
The Lompoc plan had little of the prototype CB&Q in it - It would be Great Northern, but using some of the CB&Q line locations (Thermopolis, for one) in Wyoming.
In 1987, a few years after leaving Lompoc (due to the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion), I started reproducing almost exactly the same plan again, this time in a garage in Kent, Washington. I started focusing a little more on the prototypical CB&Q routes and stations with this plan, but still was going to make it part of the GN. A personal disaster brought about the dismantlement of that layout shortly after scenery was started.
While in Kent I settled on the era I wanted to model - the 1940s - and have revised that only a little in subsequent years, to the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In 1997 I bought my house in Wenonah, New Jersey, and started working on my current layout. Here's the Wenonah plan.
Lower Level:
Upper Level:
Quite a mish-mash of track, huh?! A lot of the track would be hidden, so what looks like a spaghetti bowl (and probably would be behind the scenes) would not appear so once scenery was installed.
Construction started in early 2000, after I got one section of the basement finished. This is the area where the helix (the orange loops in the plan) was to be located:
Then in May, 2001 I got married. So much for much work on the layout for awhile! And then came the big move, and more delay...
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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bxcarmike
Crew Chief
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Posted - 07/03/2007 : 11:33:30 PM
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Mark, that's a lot of layout you've got going. I guess I should work on mine soon. lol, keep us posted. mike h.
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Country: USA
| Posts: 538 |
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Peterpools
Engineer
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Posted - 07/04/2007 : 06:44:24 AM
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Mark
enjoyed reading about your concept and spending time on your web site. Some very fascinating material to read and look at. This is going to be an awesome project and from the looks of it, your planning and it's current state, one fantastic railroad. Keep posting your progress as often as possible.
Peter 
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Country: USA
| Posts: 12335 |
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LVN
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 07/04/2007 : 08:19:31 AM
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Hi Mark. Looks like you have the itch. That track plan is really something. Looking forward to see the progress of your railroad.
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Chris Lyon
http://www.lyonvalleynorthern.blogspot.com |
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Country: Canada
| Posts: 5047 |
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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/08/2007 : 04:23:06 AM
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Thanks, guys. I just hope I live long enough to see most of it done!
On with the story!
Chapter II - A New Home for the Layout
My wife worked in New York City and I worked just south of Philadelphia, so we kept our own houses for awhile after we got married (hers in Newark, NJ; mine a bit more than 100 miles south, in Wenonah NJ). Still, work on the layout slowed from a crawl to a bare creep. Then in December 2001 we started looking for a place in between Philly and NYC, so work on the layout halted. Basements were one of the key features I looked at when we were searching for our home!
To spare you any more needless detail, we moved into the new house in Merchantville, NJ in June of 2002. The next several months saw all the move-in-and-organize activities, plus revealed how much work we would have to do on our "new" old house - an unexpectedly large amount! In other words, no progress on the layout, which I had cut into sections and brought along with me.
You can see pieces of it laying along the walls in these two photos:
We knew we would be re-wiring the house when we bought it; we did NOT know we would be re-plumbing it, replacing windows and floors, installing a new heating system, etc. as well! To say nothing of an addition we started talking about shortly after moving!
I began updating my track plan shortly after moving in, and early on figured out that I could re-use the existing parts of the layout I brought with me. At least I wouldn't be starting over! Gutting of the partially partitioned basement went on even as layout reassembly began:
Here you can see that the paneled walls, the right-hand background in the first photo of this post, have been removed and the parts of the layout from Wenonah have been reassembled:
Look closely and you'll also see that the electrical panel is being relocated to the far left back wall in this photo from it prior location, which would be to the left in the foreground. Also note the boiler (heater) and hot water heater (directly beind the right foreground support column) near the back wall - more on those in a future chapter.
Initially I planned to make only slight modifications to the Wenonah layout plan - it fit pretty well in the new basement with only minor tweaking. But plans change...
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/16/2007 : 12:25:36 PM
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Chapter III - A New Track Plan!
In early 2003 we were planning our new addition. We would be replacing the somewhat delapidated screened porch (on the right in this photo)...
...with a new, larger area for a kitchen, dining room, and new mud room. While the architect worked on the plans, we engaged an electrician to rewire the existing house. He started in April. All these things impacted (and delayed) the erection of the new layout.
That was OK, though, because there were several exciting features about the addition and the re-wiring that made it worth the wait. The electrical box was being relocated from a troublesome spot (in terms of layout arrangement) to a free corner of the basement, but best of all -- We decided to put a basement under the addition, which meant that the laundry room, basement stairs and workroom would all go into the new area, leaving me the entire older part of the basement for the layout! OH, JOY!!! So while the electrician was wiring away and the architect was finalizing the addition drawings, I was busy revising my layout plan!
The Wind River Canyon now had its very own peninsula, with the high plains between Casper and Shobon on the opposite side. This area would not be double-decked - I wanted the mountains to rise from the benchwork clear to the ceiling.
After months of planning, and after a whole lot of drawing and re-drawing, compromising and re-compromising, I finally managed to get what I wanted and finalized this track plan -
Lower Level:
Upper Level:
And I thought the Wenonah track plan had been a spaghetti bowl...
But what the heck, off I go! By late October 2003 (after the electrician was FINALLY done - six months after he started) I began new construction, with the Glenrock and Thermopolis benchwork, and a bit of new track on the NP staging loop:
New construction was underway!!
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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cpetersonmd
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/16/2007 : 1:39:24 PM
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Well, looking good so far. The layout progress is quite rapid this way. So.......what happened next, this is almost like the cliff hanger at the end of TV programs
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Country: USA
| Posts: 280 |
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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/20/2007 : 12:42:22 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by cpetersonmd
Well, looking good so far. The layout progress is quite rapid this way. So.......what happened next, this is almost like the cliff hanger at the end of TV programs
Thanks, Chuck!
When you cover six or eight months every few days, construction does go quickly. It's only when time runs at normal speed that I can't keep up with slugs. 
Chapter IV - The NP Mainline
I left off at the end of 2003, having just resumed construction on the NP mainline.
The final configuration of the NP mainline looks like this:
It's a bit different than what it looks like in the track plan I published on 7/16/07, in that the Minneapolis staging yard is now on the wall opposite Laurel, rather than clear across the room, and Minneapolis has five yard tracks instead of three. Since all but Laurel is hidden track on this loop, I decided it didn't make sense to have hidden trains running clear across the room when their purpose could be served just as well without all the out-of-sight running. And as operations planning and construction of the NP mainline progressed, the originally planned three tracks seemed more and more likely to be inadequate. I didn't actually make those design changes until later in 2004, but figured I should explain why the plans look different now.
So back to construction---
Over Christmas break of 2003 (I always get Christmas to New Year's Day off, courtesy of The Boeing Company), my friend Walt and I demolished the last interior walls in the basement - the work room:
It took me months to cut all that up and cart it to the curb!
By January 2004 I had the Laurel peninsula benchwork built, and began laying the east end of Seattle yard (that's the end just around the curve from Laurel):
By March track had "marched" (boo!) around the curve from Seattle yard and was heading into Laurel. In this view, Seattle is the yard to the upper right, and Laurel begins at the double-crossover at the bottom and proceeds up between the two support columns (don't you just LOVE obstacles?) in the center:
Note the red electrical jumpers on the crossover - tracklaying was proceeding far faster than electrical wiring at this point! (those jumpers stayed there for months!!).
By July the mainline was through Laurel and tied back into the stub of track that had been laid several years earlier in Wenonah:
I could now run a train all the way from the mainline under what will become Glenrock (along the front wall of the house, oppoiste the aisle from Laurel), around through Seattle Staging, through Laurel, and back to the Glenrock benchwork. It was at this point I decided to revise the NP mainline - trains take so long just to cover this much distance that it became obvious that running them clear across the room would be useless.
In July I set the goal of completing the NP mainline loop (sans Minneapolis yard tracks) by Christmas. There was a lot of other stuff to do to accomplish that, including building more benchwork and taking several months off the layout to make another major change in the house (and basement, and so track plan...)
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
Edited by - Brunton on 07/20/2007 12:47:19 PM |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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MarkF
Engineer
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Posted - 07/20/2007 : 11:50:48 PM
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Hey Mark, I missed this thread before... somehow! But what an interesting story of a layout concept and design, and how it evolved. The plan looks great and I'm sure everyone here will enjoy watching the progress.
Hope you had a good time at John's! It was great to meet you.
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Mark
See my homepage at http://home.comcast.net/~prrndiv/
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Country: USA
| Posts: 9327 |
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LVRALPH
Fireman
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Posted - 07/21/2007 : 07:19:22 AM
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Mark, great update. This will be fun to follow. I see ya got to Johns. That is a good time with good people. I hope you enjoyed yourself. And no one inflicts more pain per per thread than me on the forum, so post away.
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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/21/2007 : 10:52:32 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by LVRALPH
...no one inflicts more pain per per thread than me on the forum, so post away.
Forgive me for saying so, but I already figured that one out, Ralph!
To both you and Mark - I had a great time at John's! I'm looking forward to next month already!! And at the rate I'm progressing, in ten or twelve years  I'll be ready to try an ops session on MY layout.
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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LVRALPH
Fireman
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Posted - 07/21/2007 : 12:42:03 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Brunton
quote:
Originally posted by LVRALPH
...no one inflicts more pain per per thread than me on the forum, so post away.
Forgive me for saying so, but I already figured that one out, Ralph!
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Watch it...I know where you live! Would'nt take much to bury another Mark. Kind of like a tradition!
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MarkF
Engineer
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Posted - 07/21/2007 : 5:31:19 PM
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Ah Mark, I see you've met Ralph. Sorry. We tried to keep him away. Eventually, if your unlucky, you'll get to meet him in person and then you will truly understand what we're talking about!
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Mark
See my homepage at http://home.comcast.net/~prrndiv/
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Country: USA
| Posts: 9327 |
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LVRALPH
Fireman
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Posted - 07/21/2007 : 5:34:44 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by MarkF
Ah Mark, I see you've met Ralph. Sorry. We tried to keep him away. Eventually, if your unlucky, you'll get to meet him in person and then you will truly understand what we're talking about!
yea, then he can suffer almost as much as seeing you in person.
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Brunton
Engine Wiper
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Posted - 07/26/2007 : 7:55:37 PM
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Chapter V - Still on the NP Mainline
So in July 2004 I set the goal of completing the NP staging loop (though not the Minneapolis yard tracks) by Christmas day.
That would not be easy since in addition to the layout work I had all sorts of work to do on the house (don't ever buy an old house, unless you want your main spare time activity to become working on the house and not the trains!).
So right after I set the goal I virtually stopped working on the layout until mid-October!
Some of the things that kept me away from the layout:
We had air conditioning installed on the first floor. That meant work had to be done in the basement, around the layout. That was August.
In late August we installed the ceiling in the new mudroom:
In September we painted the floor in the new basement (actually, my wife did most of that work - I was in Amarillo Texas for work for a couple of weeks. Those trips to Amarillo were frequent and two weeks at a stretch, which was another reason layout work progressed so slowly):
And the BIG project - a new heating system for the house, being installed in the new basement. Although we had a contractor install the new boiler and hot water heater, as well as remove the old ones, I did most of the auxilliary plumbing, with the help of my wife and a friend. Here are the new distribution manifolds I built in the August to October period, after the installers mounted them on the manifold panel (which my wife and I built and installed):
(This kind of stuff is why I can solder)
Here, sitting next to the East end of Seattle staging, is the old boiler that's about to be removed:
OK, OK! I know this is a model railroading forum and not a how-to-rebuild-your-own-house-from-scratch forum. Back to the trains!
Being as how I'd spent so much time on the house during the summer and early fall, I decided to finish out the year focusing on the layout. By the end of November I finished benchwork for the Wind River Canyon peninsula and Thermopolis (where the big rolls of cork are in the back):
And I DID manage to meet my goal - About 11:45 Christmas Eve night, I finished the NP staging loop.
But I happened to notice one thing late in 2004 - there was a big empty spot where the old boiler had been!
Hm. What to do with that?
Now that the NP loop story is complete - at least as far as running trains around in a big circle - it might be a good time to explain my operating scheme for the railroad (and a good time for all you folks who have more operating experience than me - that'd be more than about four hours total - to tell me where the flaws are in my plan). Doing that will also explain the other routes on the layout, and maybe make future installments of this story easier to follow.
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http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.blogspot.com |
Edited by - Brunton on 07/26/2007 7:59:33 PM |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 389 |
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