Mt Vernon Terminal Railway

[learmoia]

When my parents lived in NW Washington, I would drive by this small yard in Mt Vernon, WA, and I always thought.. 'This would make a great switching layout for a bedroom or apartment!'
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mount+Vernon,+WA/@48.4282075,-122.3377193,613m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x54854c9976b2c319:0x833e5c6c60d9e145!8m2!3d48.4201105!4d-122.3374543!16zL20vMDEwdGN2

I always figured it was a small storage yard for BNSF.

I saw this picture on Railpictures.net...
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/823890/

I didn't realize it was it's own railroad..

A great 3 wall layout for N or possibly HO..
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[Tristan Ashcroft]

That is cool - but I'm here to note: I love the screen-cap and rotate methodology of rough draft track planning!  Looks quit applicable to many situations.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That is cool - but I'm here to note: I love the screen-cap and rotate methodology of rough draft track planning!  Looks quit applicable to many situations.

Especially if it convinces people to realistically space stuff out!

[signalmaintainer]

Just wish it had another industry or two at which to spot a few more cars. Otherwise it's still a modelable railroad, especially for tank car fans.

[learmoia]

You could free lance those buildings along the spurs into more industries...

Technically - I guess already did - Those spurs on the right wall (on the other side of the BNSF main) - That's not even part of the Terminal road - thats a BNSF customers.

~Ian

[learmoia]

I took some time to draw up the railroad in CAD in google maps..
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Yellow=benchwork
Black=tracks
Green=roads
Cyan=ocean
Purple=buildings

I first drew it to 1:160 scale which produced a layout approx 13' / 10' which fit on 3 4x8 sheets of plywood.

Then I modified the plan slightly rotating portions a bit to make a U-Shape similar to my first post of the screen shots.  That got it down to something that would fit into an around the wall 12.5' x 8.5' bedroom.

The only changes I had to make were adding 24" curves to the tracks at the rotation points.
(we are still 1:160 scale except for the 24" radius curves)

I think you could easily get it down to an 8x10 bedroom with some selective compression.