Planning for a Big Space

I’m modeling the Nickel Plate Railroad as it was in 1949. Actually, I’m modeling just one portion, called a division, of just one section, called a district, of the Nickel Plate. My district was the former Lake Erie & Western Railroad, acquired by the NKP in 1926, and thenceforth designated the Lake Erie & Western District. The division I’m modeling is called the Middle Division. It’s not exactly the same as the Middle Division of the old LE&W, because at the time of the acquisition the division boundaries of the LE&W were jiggered somewhat to fit into the existing division structure of the NKP, but the name stayed. The Middle Division runs eastward from Frankfort, Indiana, to Lima, Ohio, a distance of about 140 miles.

I model in HO scale, which is a ratio of 1 to 87. In HO scale an average person would stand about ½ inch tall. That means that one mile of track in HO is 5280 (the number of feet in a mile) divided by 87 or 60.7 feet. To model just the Middle Division, I’d need 8,500 linear feet of track!

Model railroaders use a concept they call “selective compression,” by which they can save lots of space yet still capture the essence of a thing in a model. Basically, you model the visually unique and operationally significant parts of things, while severely truncating or eliminating portions that are either not operationally significant or visually redundant.

For example, a huge meat packing plant might be six stories high and 200 feet square, served by 6 tracks. A good model of it could be four stories high and 50 by 100 feet, served by three tracks. The spirit of the industry is retained while the footprint is dramatically reduced.

The place where selective compression is practiced more than anywhere else is along the mainline. For example, the tangent (straight) track between two towns is cut from 15 miles to a fraction of one mile. The trackage in the towns themselves would also be selectively compressed, but typically by a much smaller amount. In other words, from a modeler’s point of view, the scenery and trackage within the town is of much more interest than the scenery and trackage between the towns.

I’ve been planning to fit my model of the Middle Division into a room approximately 50’ by 50’, or 2500 square feet. By any model railroad standard that is a room of Brobdingnagian proportions. I’ve never even seen a home layout that big anywhere. But even with that generous amount of room, I’ll be lucky to fit one tenth of it in!

Years ago, model railroads were of for the most part imaginary railroads constructed on enormous tabletops and the track looped over, under, around, and through. Trains of every type and description swarmed over the landscape while the proprietor sat at a large electrical control console and sent the trains where he desired. An observer was hard pressed to know where a train would emerge once it entered one of the many tunnels visible. This style of layout is seriously out of date, and has been largely discredited, and is now referred to as “spaghetti bowl” design.

In recent years modelers have placed far more emphasis on duplicating actual prototype railroads and the actual landscape they traverse. What’s more, many modelers, me included, are focused particularly on duplicating the same operating practices the prototype followed with as much fidelity as possible. In other words, we build a model of a specific railroad, and then we operate it like the specific railroad did. Interestingly, operations can be selectively compressed just like scenery or trackage.

Contemporary layout design utilizes a couple of principles that have sufficiently demonstrated their superiority for realism, construction simplicity, and operational verisimilitude. In particular, layouts are built as relatively shallow shelves, and the mainline of the track only passes through each shelf once. Some people call this type of layout a “sincere shelf.” Of course, there are myriad exceptions and variations to these principles, but I’ll avoid them for clarity.

The primary advantage of the sincere shelf is that an operator can walk along with his train, more easily imagining that he is inside the locomotive because the limits to what he can physically see are very similar to what an engineer inside the locomotive’s cab could see. The single track running through a narrow strip of landscape is the moral equivalent of what the real engineer is aware of as he proceeds down the right of way.

Whatever ultimate size and shape my model railroad will be, it will be composed mostly of a very long sincere shelf. It will likely be wrapped around itself in some spiral fashion in order to make the best use of the space. While real railroads go from one point to another in basically a straight line, few of us have model railroad rooms that are eight feet wide and 1000 feet long.

I have learned much about model railroad planning as a result of the many, many (some would claim too many) track designs I have made. Most model railroads occupy only a couple hundred square feet of space, and the lessons such layouts teach us are commonly known. Because I am planning to build a much, much larger model layout, I’m encountering some lesser known problems and opportunities. It is my intention to record those lessons in this blog, so stay tuned.

I Need More Room

After spending way too much time planning my model railroad I have learned what is the single, most universal truism of layout planning. It is this: No matter how much space you have available for a layout, it is not enough.

This means that while you are taking into account all of the cool things that you will build—the yards, the mountains, the interchanges, the industries—they will always be subject to the bigger, overriding concern of how much room you have in which to build.

If you have only 100 square feet in which to work, you might plan a small, narrow gauge layout. But you will always need a few extra feet to fit in that stamping mill or the interchange to the Class I railroad.

If you have 500 square feet available, you might plan a small section of a division of a big, urban railroad. But you will always need a few extra feet for that staging yard or for the lift bridge across the river in the center of town.

If you have 5000 square feet available (and who has that much room?), you might plan to build an entire division of a Class I railroad as it drives across the Midwest. But you will always need a few extra feet for wide enough aisles to accommodate the 25-man operations crew such a railroad would require.

So the essence of model railroad planning is making deft compromises. It is one thing to plan a layout that is a decent rendition of a portion of some real or imagined prototype. The trick is to include sufficient scenic and operational elements for it to look and run well, along with sufficient space for the people who will need to see it, access it, and run it. But each thing you add detracts from some other thing. It turns out that the solution rarely yields to brute force.

When I spent a few years playing around with high powered model rockets I learned this very same lesson, and it’s the one that NASA wrestles with every day. You start with a simple cardboard tube and a few grams of black powder as propellant. But to bring the rocket safely back to earth you install a parachute “retrieval subsystem.” That subsystem gets the rocket back to Earth in one piece, but it adds weight to the rocket, so you need a slightly more powerful motor. The more powerful motor demands a bigger hull. The bigger hull requires a bigger parachute. The bigger rocket is more sensitive to the timing of the retrieval subsystem, so you need to add a digital G-force sensor to fire the retrieval subsystem precisely at apogee. That digital G-force sensor is expensive, so you add a manual back up system. Both of those systems add weight, so you need a bigger motor, which requires a bigger hull, and around you go, with each system impacting each other system, ad infinitum.

Once you start up that ladder of complexity, the complexity required to support the complexity grows ever more complex. If NASA could add in all of the safeguards required to create a foolproof space shuttle, it could never be built and would never get off of the ground. All spacecraft must therefore make complex compromises in order to be effective. And the same is true for model railroad planning.

I want to model one division of one district of one modest sized railroad. It represents about 140 miles of flat, Midwestern terrain. What’s more, I intend to have lots of room in which to build it; about 2500 square feet. That’s about the size of the average three-bedroom house. That is more room than most model railroad clubs have, let alone most individuals. And yet the main thing I must grapple with in my planning is compromise.

That little kid in the engineer suit

This image is me at about 4 years old. Even at that age I was a nut for trains. My parents obliged me by dressing me up in a railroad man’s outfit of blue striped denim, a billed cap (with the word “ENGINEER” across it), and red neckerchief.

The occasion was my very first visit to a genuine live steam locomotive. It pulled a short train around the Fleishhacker Zoo (in the late 1960s Fleishhacker was renamed “The San Francisco Zoo”). There is an interesting history of the 22” gauge train here.

For the record, as this photo was being taken, I was scared to death by the loudly hissing monster. Eventually I conquered my fear and I always enjoyed outings to the zoo, but my favorite part was always the train.

Plan D

Oh, those lucky people who live in the Midwest! When they want to build a model railroad, all they have to do is descend into the basement and build a layout.

We Californians don’t have basements. All of our houses are built on slabs of concrete sitting right on grade. It doesn’t freeze here in the winter, so there is no need to get below the frost line. Well, I suppose not having a basement is a reasonable trade off for having balmy winters. But it still makes things tough for a model railroader.

I’ve been trying to build an auxiliary building on my property to house my model railroad and my workshop. The process has been very trying, and I am no closer to having a layout than I was 18 long months ago when we moved to our new house in Portola Valley CA.

In California, modelers often use garages for our model trains. In fact, many local modelers refer to garages as “California basements.” But garages make really bad model railroad rooms. For one thing, they are typically about 20 feet square, which is simply too small for a decent layout. The big overhead garage door always gets in the way. For another, they are not dustproof and dust really screws up model train layouts. And while it’s okay to park your car outside in California, it is really much nicer if you don’t have to.

The best solution is a dedicated, above-ground building. Preferably one with good insulation, lots of skylights, good temperature and humidity control, and lots of electrical outlets. Windows are good because natural light is good, but windows can get in the way of an around-the-walls track arrangement.

Since we moved here, I’ve gone through dozens of plans, but there have really been only two basic configurations. Plan A was a subterranean model railroad room in the back yard behind the house. It would have been about 3800 square feet, with an additional 1600 square feet on top. The lower level would have housed the model railroad in 2600 square feet, with the remaining room dedicated to a modest workshop, divided up into a metal shop, a woodworking shop, and a model shop, along with a small bathroom. The upstairs area would house my office, a crew lounge area, a barbecue area, a pool cabana, and a dispatcher’s office. Plan A died due to its over-ambitiousness.

I don’t want to talk about Plan B.

Plan C was a simple, above ground building constructed on the side of the house. It would be a single story, about 3800 square feet, and it would have about 2400 square feet for the trains, about 1000 square feet for the shop, and the rest for an office and crew lounge. It was certainly doable, but it just didn’t feel like a victory for me. After Plan A, all of the pieces felt too small, too restricted, and too compromised. And it would have been situated right on top of the only place on our property where we could have built a tennis court. After much soul-searching, Sue and I decided to consider Plan D.

We are right now in the process of figuring out what Plan D actually is. But it starts with selling this house in Portola Valley and finding some other place where there is more land and more freedom to do what we want with it. I’ll let you know what happens.