So after much waffling on whether or not I wanted to share my layout on this forum, I have finally decided to do it. I present for your curiosity, my layout. It is a freelanced branch which ties into the Frisco's Northern Division at Everton, MO. North of Everton is the small village of Dadeville, which in my version of history has a stockyard, small feedmill, and south of Dadeville there is a small coal mine named after the little community of Comet. The presence of the mine meant that a railroad was needed, so the community of Dadeville bands together and with other financial backers forms the Dadeville and Everton R.R. in the late 1800's. The company remains in buisness until the late 1940's when it is acquired by the Frisco, and becomes the Dadeville branchline. On my layout, it's the summer of 1950 and the Frisco has only recently finished the acquisition of the D & E (so a few misc. cars will have DE on them). The layout itself consists only of a re-imagined Everton (lack of space prevents Dadeville from taking shape at present, however, it will be built in time). It sit's on a 3' x 6' table, it is a basic oval, which lets me just turn the trains on and watch them run. But within the oval I have several industries to switch. As a result of Dadevilles' modest economic fortunes, Everton has benefited as well. There is a feed mill, a small feed & seed, Standard Oil has a facility there, and there is a tractor parts factory as well. All of which means a fair amount of traffic for a single operator. Currently I am focusing my attention on one end of the layout, some work needs to be done to finish the scenery, and I will be purchasing a depot soon, the Gerald Depot by Blairline is what I have decided to use. Some new locomotives will eventually show-up and of course you can never have enough rolling stock. After that, I'll turn my attention to Main Street Everton. While I'm not a stickler for prototype modeling, I have at least tried to be true to the type of equipment that the Frisco was using in 1950. If there are any suggestions you can think of to aid a fledgling modeler though, please post a comment. So there it is, a short description and a few pictures, but a whole lot of fun for this Frisco fan!
Shame on you for holding back. That is a very nice layout. Lots of railroading in 18 square feet. You have put quite a bit of planning into the storyline - nicely done. Can't wait for an update on the progress.
Well done, Ethan! There is something to be said for accurately capturing the spirit of a a time, area and railroad and I would say you have done a nice job on all three! When it comes time to model Main Street, there are lot of good articles on taking structure kits and tweaking them a bit here and a bit there to make them look unique to your layout. What type of base did you use on top of your plywood? I'm guessing it is some sort of styrofoam? Keep us in the loop! Best Regards,
Ethan, I forwarded a link to this string to an old ham radio friend from the 50's who grew up in Everton. Nice work. Those VO-1000's look good on any layout.
Everton had a beautiful small standard Frisco station that would be fun to model. see: http://www.missouridepots.com/everton57.htm
Great idea, Doug. It's very similar to the Winona depot I'm modeling, which is turning out to be one of the easier scratchbuilding jobs I've done.
I had considered modeling the original station. There are several kits available that are similar in style, it might be worth considering again, thanks for the link for the pictures of Everton's station. As for the material over the plywood, it's 1/2" styrofoam sheet. In hindsight, I should have gone with something thicker. Chalk up another lesson learned: "Don't rush through the planning stage."
If I may, I humbly suggest this awesome layout could be rebuilt on a hollow-core door, if there's room. A 78x30 ( or 36) inch door would work wonders, plus provide two scenes to model (or one scene plus a staging area). I like what you have-it looks really sharp!
