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.