This week the missus and I close on a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home here in Muskogee. It has a 2-car garage attached, and the local Bureau of Land Management (read: the missus) has given me half the garage for a layout. As long as she can park her car inside, she's OK with it. This will give me a 20 foot by 10 1/2 foot space to build a new HO scale mdoel railroad. That is, after I demolish a poorly planned room built by the previous owner, and finish necessary remodeling work inside the house required before we move in...... I'm still wanting to model part of the Afton Subdivision, circa mid-1970s, with both Afton & Ft. Scott represented by staging. The main cities I want to model would be Miami, Baxter Springs, and Columbus. This would allow me to have the switch jobs that operated, as well as the four daily road freights and occasional KC-Tulsa yard drags. At the least, I'd like to have Miami and Baxter on my layout. I'm open to suggestions.............and as soon as I get a room footprint drawn, I'll post it here.
I know we have to decide what to model and what to represent (staging), but if you could figure how to include Afton, you could represent the Cherokee sub/Afton sub split, but, more importantly, you could replicate a move at Afton that happened often. Many times south bound trains would have to reduce at Afton because they could drag more tonnage on the Afton sub than we could on the Cherokee sub. If you could use Cherokee as the staging, you could make this move, and also pick up the tonnage later with another train. Congratulations on having an understanding land management expert, as your space sounds like you can have a good sized layout. I, too am planning a layout in my loft, and while I have finally settled on the general concept, I have yet to lay it out on a scale plan. I plan to model Tulsa with staging being Sprg./KC on one side and Dallas/OKC on the other. I am looking forward to seeing your plan when you post it. Good luck, Terry
I wish I could include Afton, since that's where our family moved in 1973, and where all three of us kids graduated from high school (and also where Dad is now buried). I could even include trains 3010/3011 occasionally laying over due to the crews hog-lawing. However, due to space, I may have to relegate it to a staging track. I have been looking again at the Miami Branch (ex-NEO), and I see a great layout design element, what with BF Goodrich traffic. I could also include the Miami Co-Op (which was served via a remnant of the former KO&G line), as well as some of the other shippers along the main and the Miami Branch. I would also have a place to run my GP7s and GP38AC/-2s, both on the MIami Branch Switcher and the Columbus Switcher. The through freights could come from staging, roll thru Miami, and exit to staging (isn't that what happens in real life?). I gotta warm up that trackplanning software.............
YES! Congratulations on being able to deal with the "Bureau of Land Management" as opposed to the "War Department". The BLM is typically much more amenable to usage of real estate. I too, have been so blessed. With a 10 1/2' x 20' space, you could do an easy - climbing multi-deck with relatively large staging at each end. Plenty of space for a very interesting arrangement. Your opening into the layout would be able to fall in line with the front end of the other garage stall - one duckunder or drop-down/lift up "bridge" section and you would be in the center of everything. Below is a visual of the space you have available with some benchwork size objects for inspiration.
Several of us are always eager to jump on layout design problem. I'd ask for track charts and be looking at the quadrangles since I'm not familiar with the geography of any of your towns. For inspiration, you might want to check out a layout that's right up the road in Inola. Not much more space when you include the staging in former attic. It's the Milwaukee, but that's kind of a special road to any of us that knew Eddie Abbott. I thandles four visitors for operations! An introduction could be arranged if you don't know the Waldvogels.
I was there this past weekend, in fact- Steve Waldvogel is taking the superintendent's job in Mannford in the fall, which means his awesome HO scale Madison & Southern is being dismantled. It's kinda sad, but I took plenty of pictures (plus a couple of videos for posting on Youtube), and goe some great ideas. One of them involves a Busch grass mat and flextrack to come up with a weed-covered railroad. IIRC, he built his layout in a 27-by-12-foot space, ont including the staging tracks.
This is a rough draft of the layout, working in a 21 by 8-foot space. The feature here is the Afton Sub's Miami Branch, which even in the 1970s generated traffic, mostly from the BF Goodrich tire plant. The through freights would be bit actors, running across the visible sections like actors in a play, while the star would be the Miami Switcher. The "Second banana", as it were, would be the Columbus Switcher, which would enter from the Ft. Scott side of staging, swap cars with the Miami switch job, and return back north. Minimum mainline radius is planned to be 27", with 22" for the branch line. Track placement is not final, and I haven't ruled out using two separate staging yards, one atop the other, stub-ending, with one track left as a continuous loop in the off chance I just want to see a train run round & round Again, I want this to be HO scale, since I have a boatload (trainload?) of HO diesels and rolling stock. This plan was drawn with Atlas' RTS version 8, but I can try my hand at XtrkCAD (have it loaded on my computer). Comments/criticisms welcomed.............
One thing to keep in mind; reaching distance across the layout. Absolute maximum is about 30" assuming no structures in the way, and that is with no rolling stock near the aisle interfering with the reach. The distance to reach drops further with increased layout height. As some of the layout planning books recommend, try building a very simple width mock-up and try it at the height(s) that you might want your benchwork. If you have operated on some example layouts, you probably already have a good idea what will and won't work. Sounds and looks like you have something good in mind.
Keeping Rick's "Rule #1" in mind, I very much like the design by Keith. I might shift the two peninsula sections a bit, but, other than that - it is a very simple easy to build design which is very functional. Nice work, Keith.
