A Proto Project

 

Caboose X-181 “The Hutch”

Layouts need rolling stock. This layout, (whatever it turns out to be,) will need it too.  Most of the stock is planned to be re-wheeled and detailed ready to run and kit built items. Except this prototype above. Mind you, depending on the layout, it might not be used on it at all. I just have to build it.

It was known as “The Hutch”. Officially Great Northern Railway Caboose X-100/X-181. Built in the Waite Park, MN Shops in 1953. It was conceived to carry less than car loads of freight on rural branch lines. Even though it operated for over 30 years on rural Minnesota lines it must not have been deemed a success for no others were built.  

It spent most of its life on the Hutch Spur, or Lester Prairie turn, working the branch line to Hutchinson, MN. Working from Lyndale Yard through Wayzata, Mound (where the line served the Tonka Toys factory), Spring Park, St. Bonifacius, Mayer, New Germany, Lester Prairie into Hutchinson. The line was removed in the nearly 2000’s. But many remnants of the line remain. 

I myself live in one of the settlements on the route. So it’s natural to want to recreate a model of something that in it’s time was a daily visitor to the town. 

The prototype looks like a modellers “kit bash” of sorts. A caboose and baggage car on an extended chassis. That’s pretty much what it is. The underframe is from a 50’ fish belly Great Northern boxcar from the 1920’s. Standard 25’ caboose and baggage car plans were used for the construction of the body.

GNHS data sheet number 132 details the history of the car with drawings. The vehicle is also preserved and many photographs of it exist on the internet. 

It would be nice if the project could be as easy as it appears. Especially if a suitable donor caboose could be found. The lines of the prototype seem quite simple, square and perpendicular, so shouldn’t provide too much of a challenge. Now if there’s a fish belly box car, and baggage car out there too…

Versions

 The Hamon Deltak concept stuck with me for quite some time. Though I think that was mostly down to the huge machinery that came out of the premises. They are pretty fascinating. Items like these would be relatively easy to scratch build as they are all  straight edges, square corners, and in some cases, tubes. Exact measurements aren’t really needed as these are all custom made to suit the task. Just copy what you see and make to proportions fit.

The effect of seeing the items in real life translated well into the model. Look at this view below on the original Hamon Deltak APA box layout. Though this is only a test shot, set up during construction. I Feel better about this shot than many other views from completed layouts. It was so much fun to look at the photos and try to work out dimensions. I am more than a bit curious to find out what size a heat exchanger like this would be in O scale. Not just the size, the volume. In O scale these would be BIG things. 

I tried a couple of other iterations of the concept to use this piece of heavy industry I created. One used the baseboard from Wingetts recycling. But having two concepts I was keen on melded together kinda cancelled each other out. I thought it was going to be the great solution to everything but it just wasn’t.

Then there was this version. I think this one was actually going to get built, but it got cancelled when we moved house and downsized. I really liked the arrangement of the main building, the way the track curved behind it. Though the radius of curve I’d have to use in O scale would probably preclude me from directly translating this plan into O.

After these recent posts, I think you can get a fairly good idea of what I want to achieve in my small P:48 layout. Next time, we will talk about what you Americans delightfully call “Givens and Druthers”.

Everything is happening at the same time…

 Once upon a time, back in the day. I was fond of titling blog posts with favourite, (and often obscure to most people) song titles. This song just seemed to fit today, because two O scale locomotives arrived courtesy of that well known auction site. I’d won the items over the last couple of weeks. But because of the vagaries of the postal system they both arrived today. 

First the AHM Atlas Plymouth MDT. Six wheel version.

Rear three quarter view. It’s that tank on the footplate that I love about the 6 wheelers

Front three quarter view. Horn looks a bit bent.

The weathering is nice and probably better than I could do out of the box right now. You can find these on eBay for $25. If the wheel replacement is as easy as they say. There can’t be any cheaper way to start a P:48 roster.

Next up,  a Weaver Alco RS-3. My misfortunes with the first RS-3 I purchased were documented earlier. Undaunted, I sought out the correct one. It turned out there were a plethora of them at the time I was searching. I could pick and choose. I chose this one.

The previous owner was starting on a low nose conversion

All the paint has been stripped off the body has been primed

The correct, convertible bogies.

As there were so many of them out there I looked around at the prototype and became somewhat enamoured of the low nose RS-3. Simple conversions of the regular (high nose) locomotives they were mostly used in hump yards. I expect the nose being chopped improved visibility. Some found their way into road service and one is preserved at the Alberni Pacific Railway in Canada. 

I like locomotives with character and I think the low nose RS-3 has it. Some of them, like the one preserved at the Alberini Pacific Railway look downright odd, like some weird multiple-eyed alien.  But this one  looks quite normal, and compares nicely to my unfinished model. I just need to reshape the window, add the light housing and it should look the part.

The character of the low-nose is captured well.

One last thing. It’s an older loco. So it came in an old box and the warning on the outside made me smile. It’s so from another time. The typeface, the wording, the emphasis in the warning. It just made me laugh.

I wasn’t really expecting all this to arrive on the same day. But it does spur me on to get a concept for the layout going and come up with a proper design.

How small a space can you get away with?

 You will have seen in these last few posts one of my basic tenets of micro model railway layout design. The desire to get a quart into a pint pot. I do not have the space in my house (or garage for that matter) to recreate class 1 railroading. Or even shortline railroads for that matter. So I concentrate on where products starts and finish their journeys. Industrial subjects. Places where things are delivered to, or dispatched from, by rail.

The layout where I pushed this to the absolute extreme was Hamon Deltak. Built in H0 scale, it was inspired by a heat exchanger manufacturer premises that I can see from my desk at work. A good few years ago  now (perhaps 2010) I witnessed several enormous heat exchangers being dispatched by rail for somewhere. 

Google Earth view of the Hamon Deltak facility

Old photo taken on a primitive digital camera of two of the huge heat exchangers

I tried to cram the essence of the facility into an APA box (a flat pack toy storage box from IKEA, about 27”x14”.  Certain elements of it worked, some didn’t. It was maybe a bit too small for what I was trying to convey, and my constructional skills were lacking for my first attempt with the box kit.

This was the entirety of Hamon Deltak 27”x 14”

 You should be able to glean the track plan from this image.
A single track runs through with a siding in each direction 

Another view of the layout in its box

The structures on the layout and the backscene were based on what I can see from my office, (to really locate things) Though not exact copies of the structures they definitely look like them. 

The important thing on the layout was the finished product, the huge heat exchangers. They had to be modelled. I think I may have made those first. They did have to fit through the doors of the factory after all. 

The model of the heat exchanger that started it all

I often think back fondly of Hamon Deltak. It wasn’t perfect by any means. But there was a lot I really liked. There was the challenge of distilling the essence of a very heavy industry into the smallest possible space, and then there was those amazing heat exchangers. They would look great in O scale. Wouldn’t they?

Further layout ideas

If you know me, you’ll know there’s two types of cars on American Railroads that I really like. Railboxes, (I have four different types in H0 scale and now one in O) and Coil cars. I have three or four different ones of those in H0 scale as well. So I’m always looking at ways to get both into a layout.

In the preview issue of the Micro Model Railway Dispatch I suggested a micro layout based around a small steel distributors/fabricator. Steel could be delivered in Coil cars and flat cars. Where finished products could be dispatched on flat cars in in boxcars. That sort of layout would be a win, win for me. Even better than a scrapyard layout perhaps.

Duluth Steel Fabricators was one such place. I'm very familiar with it as it's visible from I-35 when driving into my favourite Minnesota City. 

Google Earth view

As you can see from the aerial view, it was once served by rail. Although it is still quite a large structure, if modelled in low relief, I think the basic elements of the structure could be distilled into about three feet in length in O scale.

Below is the conceptual vision I had for the layout, as it appeared in The Micro Model Railway Dispatch. I delighted in throwing in some items that really located the model firmly in Duluth. The Overpass section of I-35 and the advertising hoarding. The billboard would work in H0 scale but might well be a bit too big for O scale.

A visualization of a simple version of the layout.

Explanatory trackplan. 

Spots for just two cars on the layout may not seem like much. One under cover for flat cars and Coil cars. One outside for boxcars. But moving one car out from under cover and replacing it with another when a the outdoor spot is occupied, calls for a judicious amount of car shuffling. I think this might work out in 6’ x 18”. It might be a bit cramped at that. But I hope I’d be able to fit a representation of the office side of the building, something else that would really help locate the model.

Distinctive structures help add atmosphere

Now all this puts me in mind of another layout I built a few years back. Hamon Deltak, where I tried to fit the largest industry I possibly could in the smallest space I had. That’s a story for another post.

You never know what you’ll find.

 Over this Memorial Day holiday I paid a visit to the Twin City Model Railroad Museum. It’s a place I used to volunteer at when I first arrived in the USA over 20 years ago, until I got a proper job. I haven’t been back much since then.

A few years ago, the museum had to move from their old premises in Bandana Square, the old Great Northern Railroad Como Shops, to a new premises a few miles away. 

The Mississippi River bluffs scene on the TCMRM Ow5 layout

The main layout is a large Ow5 layout that has featured in Model Railroader. It features a nicely detailed area based on the St Anthony Falls milling district of Minneapolis and a super Mississippi River bluffs section. 

In the years since I offered my help there, the museum has expanded and now a visit offers layouts in all scales.From Lionel standard garage to Marklin Z scale. All layouts are set up for “push button” operation. You can push a button and watch the trains run. A great feature for the kids.

A couple of scenes from the old G-Whiz gang layout that was very popular at shows hereabouts for years

LEGO models can be pretty neat, not like I used to make as a child.

While I was there, I took a look on the members sales shelves, and came across this for the princely sum of ten dollars.

Weaver Railbox “kit”

A Weaver boxcar kit. A Railbox. I like Railboxes. It’s a “kit” in the sense that you have to assemble it yourself. Much like the old Athearn “blue box” models. It’s lightly weathered and came without wheels, trucks, and couplings so I have my choice there.  I have one of these kits already, and started off improving it until my protocrastination phase set in about eight years ago. That project was going really well, and if I can remember how I did what I was doing.  I should be on to a good thing with some nice boxcars, and if not? Well, I am supposed to be modelling a scrapyard layout. So they might find themselves modelled to be waiting for the cutters torch.

I think it was a good idea to head over to the TCMRM. 

A scrapbook of Scrapyard ideas

Lots of thoughts have been buzzing through my brain since I started on the layout concept, and when ideas buzz, they really buzz. Sometimes I can’t stop the ideas from coming, they come at the most inopportune times. For example, there I am in the middle of a 20 mile marathon training run, and an idea pops into my head. Invariably it gets lost. But other times I have a sketch pad or iPad close at hand and can scribble something down that I can develop. Here’s a few pages of thoughts. They’re just thoughts, no idea of layout size has entered my head yet. When I get an idea I like then I’ll measure things out and see what space they fit into.

First idea. More Scrapyard.

This is a first attempt making the scrapyard more important. Two sidings, what is known as a tuning fork arrangement, with cassettes offstage to take individual cars for scrapping or the gondolas full of scrap or flat cars loaded with wheels. The warehouse is still in the background to receive other traffic.

Second idea. All scrapyard.

Idea 2. I got rid of the warehouse at the back and devoted all the action to the scrapyard. Operations on the scrapyard could be quite intense. This is a link to a description of a typical operating session on my first scrapyard layout. Musings of a working gate to access the scrapyard appeared… Working features are always a positive thing on a small layout.

Third idea. Getting somewhere

Idea 3. Now we’re really getting somewhere! Throw in some pictures of inspirational locales and this starts to take shape. The area marked by the red line would make a good start point. A short section of track to lay. Some simple scenic features to develop, and it could all add up to a nice photographic backdrop for models. Those double stacked boxcars for scrapping would make a great scenic feature to hide offstage exits, and might be a use for those cheap 3-Rail boxcars you can buy in Menards. Stacks of wheels, and boxcar ends holding back piles of scrap as seen in St. Cloud, MN are other features I’m keen to include.

The section marked by the red line could be started as a single baseboard to try some track laying, switch building, and some new scenic techniques to create a photographic backdrop. 

It’s a good start. I feel that this is actually worth investigating further. I should measure it up and see what area it fits in.

I’ll report back in a few days.