The Skally Line

[jpwisc]

I'm a little overdue for starting this one, but better late than never. First off:

The Overview
The St. Croix Valley Railroad (aka The Skally Line) reporting marks SCXY (aka to BNSF crews as "The Sexy") is a prototype line that branches off the BNSF Hinckley Subdivision in Hinckley, MN. It runs 36 miles south to a dead end in North Branch, MN. I run this N Scale line as the prototype does. I have gotten great info from the crews there as well as the official Timetable for the line.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
When crews come on duty, they start where the real crews do, in the Skally office, doing paperwork. First timesheets and then the loco inspection report.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Then they review the work orders for the day. These are also based off the prototype.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[jpwisc]

The Construction:
I started this layout years ago. One thing I learned from my Dad was to build a layout you can take with you. We all move, and I did. From Minnesota to Nevada. The entire layout is built to FreemoN standards. This let me test each module set as part of a larger layout, before I had them all done.
I built the frames from 3/4" Birch Plywood capped with 1/4" birch plywood and 1" foam. This is rigid, tough and transports well.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
I have 12 modules. Three are corners (two 90 degree and one 135 degree), one two module set, one three module set and one four module set. Most of the straight modules are 6' or 6'3" long and they are all 18" deep.
For shows the modules are 50" high, at home I have them set to 52".
I power all of my switched with tortoises, activated with keyed DPDT switches. That way I don't have to worry about button pushing kids at shows.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[jpwisc]

Motive Power:
I'm not a big fan of stock engines. Every engine on my line is custom built by myself. I have 4 Skally engines and 5 BNSF units (I only keep three of these on the layout at a time).
SCXY GP9 #1363 and SCXY GP8 #1352 seen here with ILSX GP10 #1345 (no longer on the line).
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
SCXY SD40M-2s #1325 and #1326
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Some of the BNSF Units:
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
All based off the real things
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[jpwisc]

The Layout Design Elements (Towns and Industries):
As Hinckley is the BNSF Interchange, it had to be modeled. It is a 4 module set (only 2 of the modules are in the layout right now as I have a module under construction in their place for testing. 
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Both the BNSF and the SCXY have sidings in Hinckley at the Junction. This used to be the major crossing of the NP and the GN between St. Paul, MN and Duluth, MN. After the BN merger, BN removed the diamond. BN operated the Skally Line for a while (it was the BN Amber Subdivision). They sold it to Rail America, who sold it to the current ownership group.
This is the SCXY Hinckley (HIN) siding.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Moving South we head through Beroun. This is one of the few cuts on the line. It is relatively flat and straight.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
From there we come into Rush City, passing the Creekside Cafe. In real life this is on the SOuth end of town, but I rotated the modules 180 degrees so I wouldn't have to reach over the large Ardent Flour Mill when switching.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
This 12 feet of Rush City has almost no selective compression. The buildings are all built as close as I could get them to full size. This is my third version of this scene. I'm a big believer that if you aren't happy, tear it apart and do it again. The Amber Flour Mill (now Ardent was BN's main customer on the line).
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Next we keep heading south past Interstate Energy Partners. This is a LNG unloading facility. In real life their 4500' siding ends at a 90 degree angle to the Skally Main Line.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Then we get to North Branch. I haven't finished this area yet, it is still in the rough mock-up stages. The track layout is prototypical, but the sidings are oonly about 50% the length of the prototype. The Northern Customer is Titan-Lansing, they are a sand processing facility. They ship small cuts of sand cars as well as weekly BNSF unit trains of sand for use in fracking.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
Across the street is Zinpro. They make performance animal feed. They receive tank cars of Hydrochloric Acid.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
The southern most LDE is a scenic module that will later connect to the rest of North Branch (when I build it).

[jpwisc]

Operations:
This is an operations based layout. It takes a crew of 2 somewhere between 1.5 hours and 2.5 hours to finish out a full day. The prototype operates 8-4 Monday through Friday with extra hours as needed.

For the most part crews start at the SCXY Corp HQ in Rush City. The 180 foot long engine house behind the HQ was designed to hold all 4 Skally Engines. There are times engines will be left elsewhere on the line and I will occasionally incorporate that into ops to mix things up. 

Usually the session starts with switching out the Ardent Mill in Rush City.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
From this view you can see all the tracks in the Rush City Yard
H1 (Siding), Main, 2, Engine House, 3, 4, 5, 6
H1 and the Main are used as A/D tracks and for sorting inbound and outbound cuts of cars.
2 is a storage track.
Engine House is for SCXY engine storage as well as freight car repair during inclement weather.
3 is a run around track and is occasionally used for car cleaning.
4 is the wheat loadout. Wheat loads are shoved in from the far end and unloaded. This side is empties out.
5 and 6 are flour loading tracks. Empties are pushed in from this end and cleaned, then loaded. Loads from 5 are moved to 6 as track 6 has the scale inside the far end of the shed.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
6 axle engines aren't allowed on this end of the tracks 5 and 6 as the curves are too tight on the prototype. My curves are a little smoother. The Mill does have a trackmobile that will move flour cars and they have a large winch for advancing wheat cars for unloading.

Depending on how many outbound cars we've collected from the mill, we will usually pull them to Hinckley at this point so we don't overload the 191 (interchange siding). It holds about 18 cars, but I hope to expand it by 5 feet at my next house. BNSF used to have a local that would serve this Subdivision, but now they drop cars on the NTWSUP (Northtown to Superior). They have to van a switchman down from Superior to handle ground duties per the local contract.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[jpwisc]

Once we bring the new cars back to Rush City we will sort them accordingly. If there is room at the Mill, we will move new loads of wheat and flour empties into position.

Once we have everything, we will head out to switch out the South end of the line. We may start with the LNG loadout if we have cars. Loads get shoved to the end of the siding, so empties are closest to the main and can be pulled at any time.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
You'll notice Titan-Lansing is a facing point industry. This requires creativity when switching. Sometimes we will bring and extra engine with from Rush City to help us. I am hoping the prototype will add a run around track here in the next couple of years. We pull loads off tracks 2 and 3 (three has the loadout shed) and fill 1 and 2 with new empties. You have to watch out for bad orders, as the Sand Plant is very picky about their cars. They also have a trackmobile for moving cars between our visits.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
We will also switch out Zinpro. Their is only one unloading rack here at the end of the spur. The Skally handles all their switching. If we know we won't be switching out the sand plant for a couple days we may leave a GP on the spur, so we can drive down and serve this customer more efficiently. rarely do the conductors on the line ride in the engines. It is easier for them to drive one of the company trucks to handle switching duties.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[jpwisc]

Once a week, the BNSF will pull a full unit sand train from the sand plant.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
The NTWSUP will drop off three engines for this job. They will usually have dirty bathrooms and smell horrible.
How the power is setup will depend on where they are going. The Skally crews need to set up the DPUs and have the Class 1 airtest done before handling the unit train over to BNSF crews in Hinckley.
If it is a HINEFV (East Fairview, ND) or HINRSS (Ross, ND) there need to be 2 engines on the North end and one on the south.
If it is a HINCRL (Carlsbad, NM), HINLUB (Lubbock, TX) or HINFCL (Ft. Collins, CO) it needs 1 engine on the north end and 2 on the south, because when they pull off the Skally and onto the BNSF Hinckley Sub, they will reverse direction and head south, so they will have 2 engines up front.

Fun times on the Skally.

[LIRR]

nicely done....

[Blazeman]

Superb. No other word applies.

[coosvalley]

  Nice!..Thanks for sharing, and please keep doing so!

I love the custom locos

[ednadolski]

Bookmarked!  You've done a fantastic job of leveraging N scale's capability to model scenes in a very prototypical way.

(The paperwork alone makes it seem like a real job )

Ed

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Oh *****. I originally thought your layout was HO.

Damn. This is some good stuff.

Also, I love the paperwork!

[nwline]

Amazing work ! Besides his layout Karl is a great guy , when I was looking for a long hood for my EJ&E SD38-2 he came thru for me . And the pictures of the Milw GP20's he did for that article in N scale railroading just don't do them justice, they are truly my friend Harz's pride and joy. Keep up the great work

[MichaelWinicki]

Outstanding explanation Karl!

Very much appreciate you taking the time to share.

[migalyto]

Awesome job on everything!