B&O's East & West Ends - The Battle of the Real World & the Modeled One

[TrainCat2]

This is the beginning process of a layout for retirement in eight years when Jamie and I move out of Sou Fla and I get a basement to recreate the empire of days gone by. My goal is both of the B&O’s East and West Ends starting at the crossing of the Potomac at Harpers Ferry all the way to Tunnelton.

As I begin to think about the flow of the road over the layout and knowing that the ROW is basically East – West, I quickly come to the realization, the operator would need to be swapping back and forth from the North side of the ROW looking South or the South side of the ROW looking North to properly view the railroad, and have the scenery that makes N-Scale so attractive, in the best orientation.

Example, from Harpers Ferry to Martinsburg, it is preferred to be north of the ROW to view the crossing with the mountains on the left, rear and on the right. The view along the edge of the river and the old grist mill and race are a perfect backdrop. Upon reaching West Cumbo, you would want to be on the south side so West Cumbo could vanish into the background for staging since this was a large siphon of traffic off of the East End. The transition from the Main Line down to the Cumbo yards is perfect for the background. Immediately though, you will want to be back on the north side for the scenery of North Mountain and the seldom seem canyon of Back Creek until reaching Cherry Run. The caveat here is the old water route for east bound traffic would be in front of the layout, not towards the back of the shelf where it could disappear for awhile since the mileage was longer than the main. Cherry Run could be handled with a rolling table for interchange so it does not count as much in the way of a problem. Being on the north side here on the East End is perfect for following the route of the Potomac through the mountains and would allow for both the Old Main Line on a finger peninsula while the Magnolia Cut-off would go right across it. I could even throw in some WM as it paralleled the OML at a higher grade level before re-crossing the OML and the Potomac just before the Cut-Off did.

Patterson Creek through the Cut-Off, Keyser, the Savage grade up to Terra Alta is best viewed from the north side and just makes plain sense. It would give me a chance to send a run-away Cincinnatian up the 12% grade. Since Cumberland would be on the north side of the ROW too, do you place the tracks to Cumberland on the wrong side of the ROW at Patterson Creek and then again at McKensie to get the big advantage of staging for traffic? How else could this be handled? From Terra Alta across the Glades and down to Rowlesburg I would want to be on the south side so I can follow the procession up and down the mighty Cranberry grade. But to view the majesty of the Cheat River grade, I must swap one last time right at Rowlesburg to the north side of the ROW.

So, trying to be true to our prototype world is not as easy as we wish it would be. How to deal with these abnormalities of the terrain of the real world in our modeled world? Many might say that it’s my world and I should make it however I want. Others are more purists and I have not decided where my allegiance lies. The video of the Sand Patch layout has got me thinking and I am having a harder time just excusing away which side of the ROW I am really on.

I would love to hear your thoughts . . . . . .

[GaryHinshaw]

Well, I did live in MD for 20 years, so this concept speaks to me.  And the thought of you modelling it is quite enticing.

Do you have even the vaguest idea what kind of basement you might have?  Are you thinking of a custom build, for example?  When I was planning Tehachapi (both the doomed MD version and the current BC incarnation) I took online maps and pulled the LDE's I most wanted out of them and started plopping them down on a room plan, looking for ways to string them together that worked in the space I had.  This inevitably involved some selective compression; discarding some prized LDE's; and even parity-swapping some of them.  But it is very motivating, and eventually you end up with the almost-uniquely-right plan for the space.  Lacking a room plan, you could always make up something you think is plausible and go through the exercise.  It is still quite instructive, and a lot of the lessons learned could carry over to the real plan.

Nice to be bitten by the bug, isn't it?

[wm3798]

I struggled with these same problems when designing my WM layout.  Hagerstown Yard made sense one way, but Maryland Junction just never quite felt right.  About the only thing I got right was positioning the Cumberland Station, by my era nothing but a glorified dispatcher's office, but even that was geographically out of synch with the operations.

I agree with Gary.  Stretch out your track charts, pour over Google Earth, and figure out exactly what LDEs are 'must haves'.  Then use the rest of the track plan to connect the dots.  I like the idea of using Cumbo for a midpoint staging yard, but it may end up to make more sense to have it be the on-layout scenicked and active yard, since it's operationally interesting and relatively small compared to the gigantimous yard at Cumberland, or the big but relatively dull Brunswick.

Not sure how you address the reverse viewing problem.  One solution is to design the layout as much for the camera as for the operator/viewer.  Your aisle's eye view may look a tad funky, but if you build in some good viewing angles from the "inside" where you can drop your camera, you can at least present  the old familiar angles in the blogs and magazines.  I like to think I did a reasonably good job of that.  The good news is that by starting at Harpers Ferry, you have a natural staging yard with Brunswick and the main poking through Maryland Heights at the East End.  I suppose you're looking for more of a scenic romp than an operator's puzzle, but you'll want to emulate traffic splitting to go up the Pittsburgh line, the Winchester Branch at Harpers Ferry, interchanges with the NW at Shen Jct, PRR at Martinsburg, the WM at Cherry Run, and whatever the heck went on west of Grafton.

I would also caution you about biting off more than you can chew.  Once my layout went from being a pleasant diversion to a distracting obsession, I knew I had put too much of myself into it.  I'm looking forward to building something again, but my days of packing a room with switch machines and rail joiners are well behind me.

If you're thinking ops, make sure you design it to accommodate whatever crew you need.  I made the mistake of putting a 10 lb. layout in a 5 lb. room, and when we were running full tilt, we were all elbows and knees.  If you're thinking of just having nice scenery to run trains through, make sure you have enough staging at each end, and at least a little something to do switching wise to keep it from getting boring.  (Not that making enough trees to cover the Alleghenies in West Virginia will ever grow tiresome... )

Looking forward to seeing what unfolds here.
Lee

[TrainCat2]

Gary, Lee, thanks. This would actually be my fifth layout, and second large one. It's been a long time since Hurricane Andrew destroyed my last one. I knew I would never have one while in this house and would have to wait for the day we moved elsewhere. Besides, the problem in Sou Fla is that there just are not enough fellow modelers to get an operating crew together. This IS a factor in the location search. Gary, I have no restrictions yet. We have only agreed that we will build a house on a slope where the basement will be used to level the 1-story living area and should be the same size as the house footprint, or about 1600-2000 sq/ft. The sloping terrain will allow a side door and a driveway to make access easier to the new man cave.

I always loved the B&O Main stem and with it, I can start start at Harpers Ferry and actually terminate the layout pretty much anywhere along the line if the layout starts getting too big. I will just need to plan phases terminating at POI where I could place staging and say  . . . enough. There are LOADS of operational challenges with a 4-track main, diverging traffic (both off and on) and funneling 4 tracks into 2 west of Paw Paw and east of Engle. Keyser will provide a HUGE operations challenge since this is where trains were re-assembled from sections and sent along to either Cumberland or onto Brunswick through the cut-off. Keyser also accumulated the empties that had to be sectioned and then shoved over the mountains back to Grafton. Motive power always accumulated there too. The only operational problem that I have is that there just were very few on-track revenue sources for a peddler or local to switch while the traffic flew by. I did read several accounts on how heavy that traffic really was until the 60's with 12 trains/hour passing through Martinsburg.

[John]

We have lots of operators in the peoples republic ..

[Leggy]

Been stocking up on tthose EM-1s and Mallets?