I’m starting with a subject I’m very fond of today: making a start!
“Hi Al….Started this year…Hollow core door and will have a 4ft extension off the back left…
Mike”
Mike’s made a great start. And it doesn’t matter how small your start is – just make one. That’s how the fun begins.
Now on to Gregory.
He made his start here, if you want to get up to speed.
“Well I am happy to see the positive response from my project, so let’s keep going:
First of all, I ended up using XtrkCad for a number of reasons. It is very hard for me to understand the underlying principles of CAD. Somehow, I was able to understand XtrkCad. (I tried SCARM, Anytrack, 3rdPlanit, CadRail. Ugh. I almost gave up!)
XtrkCad let me do two things that the others could not.
Create curves with 7” radius in HO scale.
Remember, some of these tracks are running in urban streets and this is common for street running.
Secondly, it allowed me to create a custom turnout, to match the Richard Orr single point turnouts. This was the biggest issue for me.
Downside is that there is no 3D. But I will address that later.
So I started:
The right side is the Howard Street area and the elevation is 0”
The dark line in the middle is a two sided backdrop and the left side is the run to Waukegan and is at elevation 4”. So the backdrop will have tall flats on the Chicago side and shorter flats on the Waukegan side.
The High Speed line to Milwaukee will disappear under a viaduct and remain hidden.
On the Chicago side, the topmost track will disappear behind some industrial low relief buildings. (Actually, I have some from Al that should work out just fine.) I didn’t put any industrial switching in just yet.
Then reality started to rear its ugly head. On the right side, I have 10 tracks running parallel and only 4 feet to fit them in.
The easiest one to get rid of was the center track running through the station. So I removed that and put a double crossover on the Waukegan side. The siding behind the buildings at the top had to go too. They were the least useful in this plan.
All of those tight turns and switches in an inaccessible area under Waukegan had to go too. That would never be a reliable situation.
So I made it a simple loop that would run along the edges of the railroad. It gave me pretty much access to those tracks (and overhead wire).
This is the loop that the Electroliner would run on. I have a brass model from Nickle Plate.
There are a few others available, but none of them are real reliable runners. So simplicity wins out. And if I want to run in the other direction, I just have to
switch the trolley poles.
They were articulated trains (one truck supported the ends of two cars). They had a top speed of 110mph, but the highway crossing gates could not come down fast enough, so they were restricted to 90 mph.
The North Shore also had freight operations. So the Steeple cab locomotive will pick up cars from the Railroad interchange (right next to the 2 sided backdrop) and drop them off at the Merchandise
Dispatch warehouse (double track spur on the Chicago side) and to various industries north of the city.
I put in a few spurs, just to reserve the space. This will be refined later on.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Electroliners, here are some pictures.
They were articulated trains (one truck supported the ends of two cars). They had a top speed of 110 mph, but the highway crossing gates could not come down fast enough, so they were restricted to 90 mph.
The North Shore also had freight operations. So the Steeple cab locomotive will pick up cars from the Railroad interchange (right next to the 2 sided backdrop) and drop them off at the Merchandise Dispatch warehouse (double track spur on the Chicago side) and to various industries north of the city.
I put in a few spurs, just to reserve the space. This will be refined later on.
The interchange tracks curve a bit at the far end. I anticipate that they will go under a bridge or something and butt up against a mirror.
This should create the image that they continue to go on, past the edge of the table. The mirror has to be set at an angle, so the viewer won’t see himself/herself when looking at it.
That’s it for today. There are still a lot of adjustments to be made.
Gregory”
“Al, the way I see it.
Do your homework. Set reasonable goals relative to:
What layout do I want to build?
How much space do I actually have to work with?
What trade offs will I have to make between wants and practicality?
Where are my skills and expertise?
What outside help might I need?
What outside help is actually available to me and at what cost?
What family time and relationships will be affected by this hobby?
What financial impact and hardships might this hobby impose?
Can I keep it from getting out of control?
Do I have physical limitations to consider?
These are just some considerations. There will be others because we are all different in our own way.
Zip”
“Hi Al hope all is well and i trust you and your followers have had a great summer modeling! Have a new vid that shows the layout running and the real water spouts are up and flowing. Take a look and I ask you all what kind off vid you would like to see the workings off the layout or the finished .. Maybe a start to finish vid what do you guys think?
Ken”
(Ken’s latest takes a while to get going – but stay with it. It’s worth it).
A huge thanks to Ken – have a look at the comments below!
That’s all for today folks.
Please do keep ’em coming.
And if today is the day you get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.
Best
Al
PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.
