As usual, I feel Koester tends to lean way to far on the operations side for my tastes but he did bring up some interesting points. One of those points was highlighting the difference between interesting to model and interesting to operate. He gave an example of a shortline. It putters back and forth between the same points using the same cars once a day. That was contrasted to a larger trunkline that spends most of it's time forwarding cars from a foreign railroad to a foreign railroad.
Whatever your take on operations is the separating of model-ability and operation-ability is an interesting one and it made me reflect on my current theme. I asked myself several questions...
- Is my choice of L&G motivated by modelling or operation?
- Do I prefer modelling or operation?
- In terms of modelling, what do I prefer? Natural scenery (rocks, trees, etc.) or man-made things (buildings, roads, etc.)?
- In terms of operation, what do I prefer? Switching, pickups/set-outs, etc?
I also took a 2nd look at my working track plan. Even though I haven't yet shown the track plan I'm working off of, there were a few things about it that concerned me...
- It dedicated a lot of space to engine servicing, two areas in fact. The reason why 2 I'll mention below.
- It had 2 turntables. I like the look but they are expensive and from what I hear a pain to maintain. I've also had some trouble finding a suitable size one that can spin an On30 2-8-0 or 4-6-0 with tender.
- It had a "U peninsula" as I call them. You know the peninsulas that come out and all that really happens is the train does a half-circle on them? I really don't like those. They spend a ton of space on curves and are difficult to add industries to or model on.
Koester also made another interesting point in his book. He knocked on the idea that on a single layout you can have both a producer and a consumer of a good. For example a lumber mill cutting lumber (producer) which delivers to a crate factory (consumer). His point was that these short range trips would have been done by truck likely.
How these producer/consumer things come about is that layouts are often designed to represent towns that are miles apart in real life but on the layout appear to be only 3 feet apart. Koester's solution to this was instead of modelling several areas then squishing them together, model one area in it's totality, but provide a staging or fiddle yard to represent traffic flowing from other places, east/west or north/south.
So I began to wonder what could I improve on my theme and track plan with some of these ideas. I can't tell yet if I'm going the right direction or the wrong direction here but I had some ideas...
What fits this description: Something that can be modeled in it's totality in which the scenery primarily lends itself towards man-made items, something which doesn't depend on having a lot of curves or grades, something with operational interest, and something in which narrow gauge can be plausible. What does that sound like?
I know, hard question right.
Model narrow gauge layouts are usually set pretty early. I think I saw a survey recently and the 1920's is the most common era for narrow gauge modeling. I really liked the idea of doing a 1950's Texas/Oklahoma based railroad because there's so many things that are classic american from that era; cool old gas stations and gas pumps and general stores and old bars and grain elevators and the like. It sounded neat and it was mostly from a fun to model perspective (not that it's a bad perspective).
Answering the question asked above however likely implies the railroading action will take place in a city. What is operationally interesting in a city? Any kind of classification yard or major industrial area is likely the token, however the problem with those is that they make a whole lot more sense being standard gauge and being set in a later era, say somewhere between 1960-1980. However, exploring a new-ish theme, even if it's not common to narrow gauge, is, I think, just as interesting as going down a well beaten path.
Tony mentions in his book that if one is freelancing, developing a layout into something plausible is usually as simple as asking the question, "What makes money?" Real railroads were built to cut a profit. Following the dollars can lead us to a railroad that makes sense. In some way we can take the task of designing a layout and corresponding theme and flip it around to designing a small business that employs trains to accomplish something people will pay for.
Looking at it from this approach moves us from the seat of layout owners to the seat of small business man. Designing our layouts is akin to drawing up business plans. Ensuring plausibility is as if we were in need of investors and we had to convince them there was a profit to be made and that they should invest in us.
Given that spin, I believe it would be possible to answer my "What fits this?" question above.
In the early 1960's shipping changed forever with the advent of the standardized container. These are ubiquitous now days but prior to that freight was shipped in crates of all different sizes. The standardized container brought with it a standardization in ships, piers, cranes, and the like. One of the disadvantages to containers was that they were big. Depending on the business, not every company needed to ship a huge container full of product here or there.
What if we were to design a small business around this idea. It could be set in 1962 or there abouts. The pitch? "We specialized in LCL (less than container load) freight". Great. We have a purpose, Now we need to fit this into a city. What if we designed a harbor railroad outside of a large city whose intention was to compete with the "big boys" by offering a cheaper service shipping items that weren't a full size container?
Possible? Maybe.
As I've begun to think this through I've already got a name going, Cajun Atlantic Pier Railroad. The layout would consist of a few piers and a yard. Freight would come into the harbor, either LCL or aquaculture (shrimp, etc.) and be loaded by men or machine onto flatcars, boxcars, or whatever. It would then be picked up by a switcher and dropped off in the main habor yard. A 2nd switcher would switch cars onto outbound tracks where a third and likely larger engine would pick them up and take them to the nearest major city for standard gauge interchange -- in my case New Orleans as represented by off-layout staging/fiddle.
Being the early 60's we're likely talking about mostly diesel. Boulder Valley Models offers a number of On30 boxcab conversions along with a few kitbash parts that could render a nice center cab. I can see two "Little Bose" boxcabs (built on a Davenpor 0-4-0) moving freight around on the pier.
In every sense of the layout this isn't a narrow gauge theme. HO would be a better choice. But I don't want to build it in HO and, It's My Railroad™ as they say. In the history of narrow gauge there were lines that lasted into the early 60's. The Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge "slim princess" is a good example. It even got a diesel engine or 2 so I'm not completely off my rocker.
Remember that we're small business owners. If I'm targeting LCL and aquaculture would I pick more expensive standard gauge equipment or go as cheap as possible and choose narrow gauge? "Ah", but you say, "the reason narrow gauge died in that era was that it was labor intensive to transfer the cargo to standard gauge." In which case you would be correct. However, consider this. If our business plan is to turn LCL traffic into container traffic, the freight needs to be moved into a container anyways. That means if freight comes up from our pier railroad as LCL it then gets packed into a container for a final destination and that container then gets stuck on a standard gauge line. This means being narrow gauge has no additional cost and is likely the superior choice for the price.
Interesting? Yeah.
Will I do this? Maybe.
Is it exciting to come up with a freelanced theme from scratch and make it plausible? Yep.
Does modelling a Louisiana pier railroad seem like a good idea? I'm not sure, but it sounds interesting.
I guess we'll see.
I guess we'll see.
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