A weighty matter (or two)

The first weighty problem, and I really do mean weighty, concerns the stock for such a layout. Just take a look at this lovely Weaver GP38-2. It weighs a ton! Oh all right. I exaggerate. It weighs three and a half pounds (1.6 kilograms). That’s a lot. Especially when you’ve become used to 3D printed locomotive kits that only weigh a matter of ounces. 

3.5lbs of brute force

It does make one think about the design of the baseboard for this little cameo. If you review some of James Hilton’s videos on his YouTube channel concerning the construction of his cameo boxes. Those are all built from 6mm MDF with no framing. Rigidity is created by adding the sides and roof to the box. This creates a very lightweight structure where the model scene just seems to float on the shelves in his office. This lightweight method works well for the smaller scales like N and 009. But is unlikely to work in the senior scale. Where something more capable of taking the weight of the locomotives will be needed.

I can see no reason why 6mm MDF couldn’t be used as the baseboard surface. But a more traditional bracing method will be needed to be used to support it. That will need some more thought.

The second weighty matter is more metaphorical than physical. 

The main attraction of the Plymouth industrial park for me has always been the Coil Cars, and as it stands there’s no place for them on the layout. Other than as a bit part player to pass through the scene, and this is weighing on my mind. 

Could I replace the fiddle yard exit on the left with another warehouse? One that takes Coil Cars. The Olympic Steel warehouse is a huge structure. A mock up ensued to see what the effect of a large structure at the end of the layout would be…

Probably not…

The reverse curve into the warehouse would be problematic

The reverse curve needed to get the track into the door entry towards the rear of the baseboard just looks awkward, being able to see the overhang on the cars. On the previous version of the layout, I was obstructing some of this with the fiddle yard exit structure. 

I did like this arrangement

So, the solution lies somewhere between the two. Then a Micro Model Railway Dispatch reader reminded me of a scheme I had proposed for a small steel distributors micro layout back in the preview issue of The Dispatch. It still has an overgrown, unused siding in place as you can see from the Google Earth view. Who knows how much rail traffic it used to see?

Duluth Steel Distributors premises

We would seem to have a solution to the problem. 

Onwards we go.

A Coil Car interlude.

Coil cars are a big part of traffic on the Plymouth Industrial Park. The main customer at the end of the spur is Olympic Steel. A big steel distributors with two warehouses. One receives steel coils, the other receives steel in sheet form. Pre Covid the facility was receiving multiple coil cars of steel daily. It was not unusual to see 10 or more cars delivered to the premises at a time. When I retired and left my place of work, deliveries were two or three times a week. 

There are many different styles of coil cars. The variety being down to the design of the protective covers. I was so amazed by the different styles that I started photographing them. Here’s just a few of them to illustrate the variation.

This is the Thrall Protector car. Only 60 were made.
These were made in HO scale by ExactRail

A more traditional single cover from the Southshore Railroad.

A mix of covers on this twin cover car. Santa Fe and Illinois Central
These traditional styles of car are made by several manufacturers

This rusty, battered cover is from the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern RR.
This is a style of cover known as "hex top"

The Reading Railroad merged into Conrail in 1976

The other side of the Reading car shows this old Reading Lines logo

The Union Pacific has several modern styles of cover. 
This is extremely boxy and very unstreamlined

Another unusual boxy, UP style. 

This Coil car was almost brand new out of the paint shops when
I caught it at Plymouth Industrial Park

The UP still has many old, ordinary covers in service.

All railroad cars are a target for graffiti, and I thought that this piece of work
was outstanding

If there's interest I can share more of my coil car images.

At the foot of the stairs…

Sits the layout. Such as it is right now. It’s there so I see it every time I head to the basement. This is a vital part of the layout planning. Do I get that “WOW” feeling when I look at it. If the layout impresses me every time I see it then it must be pretty close to being OK. And it does. Big boxcars in front of a big structure. How could you not be impressed?

Still impressed with the look.

Next thing is to look into the scene a little closer. Clearances. The loading gauge and such like. These things will dictate the depth of the baseboard. Right now, everything is laid on a baseboard 9” in depth. Though everything fits on the baseboard, depth wise. The baseboard could be deeper. The track comes to the very edge of the baseboard. That's always a no-no.  I’m thinking I should be adding another two inches. 

Checking and measuring. The track comes right to the edge of the baseboard.
Not good. 

That would make the baseboard 11 inches deep. That's still well under the four square feet micro layout limit. The extra depth can be used to make better use of the offstage exits. Starting with the left exit.

I mocked up a short section of structure for left hand side. Where it is placed has a huge effect on the feel of the area. As you can see from these photographs.

This is actually a quite brave positioning of the building.
With minimum separation between the structures things feel cramped

Moving things further apart improves the visual effect.
It already starts to feel less claustrophobic

The bigger the apparent gap is the more open things look.
I don't want to go much further or the offstage exit will come into view

I think that's the left hand exit sorted. Now I need to think about the right hand side. I'm inclined to go with some greenery. That will contrast nicely with the structures on the layout.

An inspiration album

In 2022, when I knew I was taking early retirement from work, I decided to walk as much of the remaining Plymouth  Industrial Park trackage as I could. Though some parts of the park had not seen trains in as much as 25 years, the track had not been removed, so the route was easy to trace. Though in places you needed a machete to clear a path through. Still, by the time I left my place of employment, I had pretty much photographed every piece of the line. Here’s some images of the area that share what I’d like to put across in this micro.

The only working section of line. Even though this is an industrial park,
there are trees for forming convenient view blocks on a layout.

An out of use section. Dull concrete walls would make a good backdrop

All of a sudden, a splash of colour!

A disused section of track. Ballast, weeds,  blacktop and rust.

This would be what I would like to recreate on the layout

Finally, a few views of how overgrown some of the tracks were on my explorations.

It's a good few years since these tracks saw activity.

The tracks go somewhere. But where?

The end of the line?

 

Some enthusiasm returns.

Sixteen months ago progress stopped on this project abruptly. I don't know why. I have a ton of research material in the form of location photographs. Everything moved over to my Micro Model Railways blog where I detailed the agonies of constructing the big warehouse backscene building. Which was really impressive. It looks great with O scale stock in front of it.

I love this building

It was shortly after this that things ground to a halt, and now I remember why. It was the sector plate. Built from quarter inch ply and 4 x 1 softwood. It was a monster. Heavy and unwieldy, it became a pain, and the balance could have been better. It killed my enthusiasm stone dead. So I drifted off into larger scales, and built some other neat layouts. 

The project killer

Then today, as is usual in my world I came back to it. It's a long story so grab a beer, or whatever your chosen beverage is and follow along. 

I’m considering two other small/micro layout projects. Something in 7/8ths inch to the foot and something in English 7mm (0) scale.  Both sit in a state of limbo right now as I wait for track for one, and some more research material for the other. But I’m a keen modeller and I need to do something. True, I have to publish the winter issue of the Micro Model Railway Dispatch. But I have to build something. 

I am keen reader of James Hilton’s Paxton Road blog and his “Cameo Layouts” and mindfulness approach to layout operation strikes a chord with me. I love to lose myself in watching wheels go around as a wagon moves along the track. Particularly curved or split spoke wheels, as the spokes momentarily cut through your field of view. James’ layouts are small, (positively tiny as they are generally N scale) but exude great atmosphere. Personally, I don’t think N scale is the way forward for me, as these 60 year old eyes are not as sharp as they once were, but I can carry his ideas into whatever scale I choose to build in.

It’s at times like these I randomly loose myself on the interweb looking for ideas. I start with a friends website, follow a link on their page and see where it takes me. 

I started at Chris Mears Prince Street blog. He has a “top posts” box at the side of the page. It seems to randomly change each time I visit. My interest was piqued by a post entitled “No turnout layout?” This was a 7 year old post. But it took me to a blog I hadn’t seen before from Matthieu Lachance and a post about turnout-less track plans. I don’t tend to agree with turnout-less plans as I think that seeing a train navigate a turnout is an essential part of the layout viewing experience. It helps tell the story about what is happening. But both these posts concerned the “newness” of the concept to them, and I like to read about peoples enthusiasm for new ideas. It can help me see what is a now old idea, through different eyes. 

Then, as a result of a Pinterest email, I found myself looking at the work of Alexander Lösch at his Frankenmodell.de website. Particularly a section on his Kosmos Cans micro layout in 1:32 scale. Big tall buildings and a very cramped locale. It immediately put me in mind of the Plymouth Industrial Park location and its “concrete canyons”.

Plymouth, MN Concrete Canyon

Things fell into place and inspiration flowed like a waterfall. From there it was a simple matter of putting together a mock up of what could be done. It didn’t take much at all, because not much was needed. I even found a suitably sized offcut of wood. Four feet x ten inches. Definitely a true micro layout size.

It’s a start

It doesn’t look much. But I can visualize how things will appear as the layout is operated. The warehouse has two “spots” (loading bay doors) to site cars. Other cars can pass through the scene, sweeping around the reverse curve to add a little more depth to the narrow scene. Appearing from behind a building on the left hand side and disappearing behind a tall fence and perhaps some trees on the right. 

It looks good. The warehouse is a great backdrop to pose items against, and I like the possibility of the curving track. Without that I think the scene will look very flat and two dimensional.

Anyway, it gives me something to think about for a while…

Plymouth Industrial park - part 1

Lets talk about the place that has fired up my creative juices. Plymouth Industrial Park. I assume that's what it's called. I've never heard any different, and no-one has corrected me when I refer to it as such. Researching the location I find that historically it's the Minneapolis Industrial Park. It was established in the 1950's by Curtis Carlson of the globally famous Carlson Companies, to draw industries to Plymouth. Particularly to the land that Carlson owned, and still do own, in the area. The area must have been quite successful in its heyday with many spurs and sidings branching off the Chicago North Western "Luce Line" west out of Minneapolis. Times change. The industries closed, or didn't want to use the railroad. The Railroads also gravitated away from small carloads towards the big long unit trains, like Cars, Oil, Grain and Coal, and now the site is a shadow of its former self. 

I don't know when traffic to the northern part of the park ceased. I moved to the USA in 1998. Our first apartment was about 2 miles away down county road 6, the road that can be said to divide the northern and southern parts, and my very first job was in a small sign factory near where the “escape rooms” are marked on the view below. The railroad tracks were still in place over Co. Rd. 6 then and the Griswold signals still had their stop boards on them. 

Now there is now just one industry that receives regular freight traffic in the area. Olympic Steel. It receives steel sheet at its building north of the railroad and Coil steel in its facility to the south. Pre-Covid it was receiving steel on a daily basis. as many as six coil cars were regularly switched in and out of the facility. Currently two trains a week visit. In my ten years working alongside the park I have only seen one other industry receive rail service. Hamon Deltak, manufacturer of heat exchangers for heavy industry. During completion of one particularly notable contract, large heat exchangers departed their premises by rail. This activity influenced the construction of one of my early APA box layouts. Further research has revealed the the line to Hamon Deltak is still in service, even though it is very overgrown, and more large heat exchangers will be leaving the site by rail sometime in the future.

I've been exploring the area ever since my company moved into one of the office buildings in the park. I would hear trains crossing Xenium Lane pretty much every day and naturally became quite curious to find out what there was to see. The explorations revealed quite a lot of interesting things. The individual locations and track arrangements can be quite inspirational for the micro layout builder. There are Inglenook and Tuning Fork track arrangements to work with. The landscaping makes the location feel quite rural in places even though it is bounded on two sides by multiple lane highways.

A Google Earth view of Plymouth Industrial Park, with the results of my explorations superimposed. Yellow is the lines and industries served by the Union Pacific. The little bit of Blue is the old Luce Line that ran westwards to Gluek, MN. The Red shows the abandoned rails. This is not exact. There are little sidings and spurs running to many of structures. There are even a couple of turnouts that don’t appear to go anywhere. Those lines must be lost under parking lots and roads. I'll show all the abandoned lines in more detail in later posts.