Large Scale Central

My busy summer!

Track and Trestles
#1

Been awhile, or have I ever?, shown what I’ve been building. Anyhow, I’ve been slowly working on my backyard rendition of the Rhatische Bahn. It begins with a three track staging yard in the garage which represents the Furka Oberaly/MGB, and this is also where I have all my storage shelves. It heads out into the real world and the first town is Disentis. Granted, it’s no where near a actual renition of the prototype, it’s what I had room for. This is looking towards the house and garage, and shows the passenger end of the station. When I get around to it this winter, I plan on building the platforms and maybe the big shed that covers the platforms. And perhaps adding in a engine pocket to store the FO engines (if I ever buy one…)

The other end of Disentis, showing the sidings, which I currently use for freight traffic. I found some pictures recently that show the RhB end of Disentis, so this end of the station is currently in it’s third rendition…

As the line leaves Disentis, it makes a big horseshoe curve around the (future) garden and ends up at the sawmill. Again, I still need to build structures. Logs arrive from Bergun, and finished lumber get’s shipped out to various points on the layout. Operating at the Crumudgeon’s alot, I’m leaning more towards freight operations on this layout.

After the sawmill, the track again makes a horseshoe to swing around along the back fence to Filisur, but not before crossing a swing out bridge. That curved turnout was removed, I never liked the way the track flowed through there a #5 turnout will take it’s place down where it straightens out.

And now we arrive at Filisur, you can see here where that #5 will end up. The short stub of track off the switch in front of the boxcar will lead to a branch line that drops down to ground level. Since the whole railroad is elevated, I had to have somewhere to actually have the railroad in the garden!

This looks down the station area of Filisur. Like I mentiond, I want the ability to do freight switching, so the turntable that should have been where the boxcar sits was replace with the industry. That and I didn’t think I could fit the turntable in with the fence in the way.

The rest of Filisur is waiting on the last few Llagas switches to be shipped, so the rest of the pictures will have to wait. Although I do have some pictures of my other part of this hobby I enjoy… building bridges! A friend lost his LGB 5061 bridge to a tree branch this past winter, so I offered to build him one out of steel. I built a jig for building this one since I’m going to have two like it on my layout, figured I’d make it easier to duplicate. These three would make bridges 4 through 6 that I’ve built. So here’s the result.

So thats what I’ve been putting around with this summer, that is when the real railroad isn’t trying to keep me busy. It’s a real battle trying to find the time to do all this while they keep trying to send me back to work! I’m going to have my work cut out for me this winter though. I’ve got alot of structures to build! But untill things do cool off too much for me, I’m going to continue building and hope to be at the begining of Bergun before I call it quits. After that, all thats left for me to build is Bergun, Muot and Sameden. Thanks for looking, and always, comment or ideas are welcome!

#2

Nice tablework Chris. Like the flow on the track plan. Is that going to be point to point?

Dave

#3

COOL!!!
I love building bridges too but a man can only build so many before his yard becomes full!

#4

Thats looking great.

#5

Dave, If you need a place to put bridges you build you don’t have to worry about running out of room. :smiley:

#6

Chris,

Wow another great rail empire starting up! Nice looking start and your bridge is wonderful. Like David I’m curious as to whether the line will be point to point.

#7

David, Richard, operationally speaking, yes it’s going to be point to point. In reality thought, Samden will have a return loop connecting the St. Mortiz and Pontresina mainline’s.

And this forms one of my problems, since I’ve realized without the other loop, I have no means to run a train continuously for just showing off the layout. One thought is that since the branch line hasn’t been built, putting the other loop at the end of it. My other thought is to take out the turntable in the staging yard and connect the lead from it into the rear tail track on the staging yard. I’m favoring the staging yard idea so I don’t need to eat up more of my yard for the other loop.

My other dilema, that David R. has pointed out, is I still have several types of bridges I want to build but I’m quickly running out of places to put them! And with all these steel bridges, I’ve yet to build one of those beautiful stone viaducts that seem to dominate the RhB.

Thank’s for all the compliments!

#8

Chris,

What we need is a proper track plan. :stuck_out_tongue: :slight_smile: :wink: :lol:

BTW if you choose your locations carefully there are a few steel bridges on the RhB, i.e. on the Oberland line (Chur to Disentis), a few on the Davos line, the one at Zernez and one or two on the Samedan to Pontresina line. Not many, so you need to pick them.

And what was wrong with that curved turnout? Looks pretty good to my eye if it works OK, but moving it farther towards the station would have replicated the entrance from the Alvaneu side a bit more.

A must for Disentis: one or the other of the old wooden engine sheds and the turntable. Over in the direction of those warning cones. :wink: :slight_smile: Removing the TT from the staging yard would then sound like a perfect idea. :smiley:

One of the TTs on our layout will be at Preda, last station before hitting Samedan in the house/garage.

#9

lovely layout…

#10

Nice layout. Good progress and keep us posted…:wink:

#11

Nice!

#12

Cool :smiley: Is that composite decking (Trex etc.) ? If so, how are you keeping it from sagging?

#13

Well, I don’t per-se have a plan for the railroad. It’s all based off some prototype station plans, and sketched out on paper. The planning occur’s when I start marking out the track plan on the dirt to figure things out. Really not the best approach to design and building, but I figure I have (just) enough room to work it all out.

Jon, the decking is 5/4" x 4" or 5/4" x 6" cedar decking. In hindsight, I wish I would have either gone with regular p/t boards since I think they would have been easier to work with. The structure is mostly p/t 2x4’s and 4x4’s. That, or followed Richard Smith’s approach. As for the color, that was the girlfriend’s contribution. I wanted a brown color or something earth tone, but she thought the green color would look better.

HJ, I wish I could include the engine shed and turntable at Disentis. Alas, this portion of the railroad is only about 2’ off the ground and I fear making it wider will create problems. But, as with everyhing on this project, it’s all subject to change. I may build an extension to include these features at some point, especially after you posted a link that lead me to a RhB turntable! :smiley:

I expect the rest of my switches to be in soon, which will let me finish Filisur. I’ll post some pictures when that happens. Oh, and HJ, Filisur is being modeled in it’s “modern” arrangement. If anything, that turnout should be closer to Alveneu to better represent the double track leaving Filisur. Maybe that curved turnout will go back…

#14

Chris,

Scratching your plan in the dirt with a stick does seem like a primitive way to do it.

I prefer the use of a garden hose stretched out to form the track plan, myself! :lol: :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

I did my curves on a sheet of plywood that I cut and laid on the ground. Then I marked it with a 1x2 on the ground and dug my trench. And I bent my track over my knee! Who needs a track bender!

#16

Major change of plans… In working out a trackplan, I began to losely try and figure out a operating plan for how the railroad will function when it’s all said and done. Passenger trains were a piece of cake, but freight posed a problem… Since my railroad jumps from Filisur to Disentis, I’m losing Chur, Landquart and some other towns that were the source of alot of freight traffic for my railroad. It sort of places a continuity error having all the freight traffic comming through Disentis. Maybe not big deal, but it’s driving me nuts!

So, the other scheme I've kept in the back of my mind was modeling the proposed connection from Scoul-Tarasp to Landeck, Austria.   My railroad would then begin with Scoul-Tarasp and selectivly model the line into Austria.

This would permit the real RhB (and the freight it orginates) to be represneted with the staging yard, and give me the flexabilty to place more industry’s online and have traffic origninate out of the Landeck end of the railroad. Could throw in a container facilty with the standard gauge OBB, and a whole mess of other freight customers.

The quandry I have now is what to do with my Glacier Express equipment? I could always suggest a section of it breaks off at St. Mortiz or Samedan and heads to Austria… That sounds like a feasible idea!

Ah well, back to the drawing board!

#17

Why not substitute one of the freight producing towns for Filisur. Or, make a ficticious town based on several of the freight towns and Filisur.

It’s your railroad, do whatever toots your whistle.

#18

Chris, :wink:

Here’s a little tip to keep you busy and the operations hopping - including the freight!

Substitute Reichenau-Tamins for Filisur. Since R-T is the junction for the Oberland and Albula line - as well as being double tracked to Chur - you could treat the Chur section as double track that loops back and add a staging yard along the line. The yard just large enough to generate i.e. re-route the trains that come from Disentis to become Albula trains. The double track will relieve the bottleneck that could develop whenever you have a junction.

#19

Hmmm, I like what you’ve come up with HJ! I was hoping to avoid dealing with the double track, but if I get creative, I think I could make that work… The upside I see here is I could model Thusis as the end point of my railroad, and just connect a staging area to it for the thru traffic to turn. Looking at my RhB map from sporeplan.nl and the photos I’ve found, Thusis seems quite appealing for the area I’ve planned for my terminal.

I really need to get my current plan/drawing scanned though. I’ve changed it to represent my Scoul-Landeck plan, but it gives an idea of the general plan of what the railroad will be like. Granted, the layout of some of the stations may change, anyways… I need to get that stuff scanned.