Planning For Realism

Your choice of a layout will depend not only on the available space and trackage but on the work you want your railroad to do. At first it will be enough just to have the locomotive pull cars around, pass onto a siding, switch onto a branch line. You have a toy train with a wide choice of powerful locomotives, dozens of accurate, scale-modeled cars, and so many interesting accessories and buildings that you can keep your budget unbalanced for months. Isn't that enough, you ask?

Of course it is enough to give you countless hours of pleasure. But you can increase that pleasure and extend it for years by developing your model railroad so that it has a special character, a personality of its own—a person- ality that is a reflection of you. A model railroad is a toy, yes, but it is much more than that, as dozens of bankers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, truck drivers, bookkeepers, salesmen, and just plain people, young and old, will testify. Paints and brushes are toys, too, in the hands of a child having fun on a rainy afternoon; in the hands of many adults they have become a meaningful and rewarding avocation, a hobby that brings in addition to pleasure the deep satisfaction of creative expression. Many hobbies can bring this satisfaction, model railroading among them, but only when there is a goal, a purpose, a plan. You have a locomotive and some cars, but what do the cars carry?

Passengers or freight—and if the latter, what kind of freight? Why does the train move onto the siding? Why does it take the branch line? These operations give more pleasure if they have some meaning—if, for instance, the train moves onto the siding to drop off a tank car of gasoline for the filling station near by; if the train takes the branch line because it is on its regular run to Jonesville, where it picks up passengers going to the city.

You and a few hundred thousand other model railroaders have made the manufacturers of trains fit their products to your plans in demanding realism from them—track that looks like real railroad track, cars and locomotives scaled so they look like real cars and locomotives. You enjoy these things and smoke and the choo-choo sounds because they reproduce the real thing. Your pleasure will be increased if you make your layout and your handling of trains reproduce, as closely as possible, the real thing, too. You can do this if you have a plan.

Your plan need not be rigid and inflexible. It should be made to increase the joy of railroading, not to hamper or reduce it. A plan can save you time, work, and money.

For example, you may find after you've had your train a short while that you can buy an operating accessory of some kind, and you are fascinated by remote-control loading devices such as the coal loader and log loader shown in Fig. 58. You buy the log loader, take it home, hook it up, and watch it work. Then you see that it looks a little out of place, because your layout consists primarily of towns and freight yards—without a forest in sight. Logs may be loaded elsewhere, of course, but it would certainly look better near a tree-covered mountain, from which the logs presumably came. A worse misfit, of course, would be an operating water tank when your only locomotives are diesels, for which you should have an oil storage and pumping depot of some kind.

One of the first buildings for your pike will be a station. If you are handy with tools, you may want to make your own, but if not you will buy one of the beautiful stations put out by the manufacturer of your train. You will find in your hobby store stations large and small, old-fashioned and modern, like those in Fig. 59. Which one will you purchase? Knowing the character of your railroad, having a plan for its development, will help you decide. If your pike is going to be laid in farming country, for instance, you will not want a large city terminal, but a smaller way station. No matter how fascinating you find the talking station that announces the destination of your train and calls, "All aboardl" you will know that it does not really fit if you have only a freight train. Instead, you will want a freight station, and if you like movement you can get one with a loading device that lifts heavy crates onto your flatcars and gondola cars.

With all of your accessories, buildings, and scenery, the same question will present itself—what fits your particular railroad as you create it? You may plan to have your system carry out all kinds of operations eventually, with both passenger and freight trains, the latter carrying many different kinds of material. This follows the practice of most real railroads and is all right, provided you have space for enough track with appropriate buildings and terrain. Even in this case, however, there should be some dominant aspect of your railroad's work. This is true of most real railroads, even when they carry on many different kinds of work. The Erie, for instance, is known primarily as a freight road, the Chesapeake and Ohio as a coal-carrying road, the Long Island as a commuters' line. There are systems whose biggest volume of business comes from carrying cattle, others factory goods, still others wood pulp or perishable foods or oil. These primary func- tions give a certain character to the different railroads, no matter how many other things they also do.

The major work of a railroad is determined in large measure by the kind of country it passes through—farmland, mining areas, industrial centers. In addition, the very formation of the land helps give a certain character to each line, whether it climbs through the mountains, sails over flat plains, makes its way alongside rivers or lakes, or skirts the seashore. A real railroad cannot determine any of these factors for itself; it must take the land and water as it finds them along its route from terminal point to terminal point. It tunnels, cuts, fills, andbridges only when it has to, for these are expensive construction jobs. You have the great advantage of being able to make your own terrain as you want it, and you can decide on the kind of materials your railroad will handle as its chief revenue producer. To carry out the spirit of realism, however, all these factors must fit together—locomotive, cars, accessories, buildings, equipment, terrain, scenery. The country should look as if it had been there before the railroad came along, and the right-of-way was made to accommodate itself to it in the most economical way.

While this involves primarily the making of scenery, it should be considered when you plan your layout even if you postpone scenery construction for some time.

It should be considered because the terrain you eventually build has a direct relationship with the work your railroad does and that determines, at least in part, the kind of accessories and buildings. The stockyard and loading ramp for cattle make one of the most entertaining accessories you can have, but it does not belong on a railroad line that travels along the seashore or in other areas that would obviously raise no cattle. Put it where there are plains and low rolling hills, where there are a few farm or ranch houses and big barns, make about half of the cars in your freight train cattle cars, and everything fits together.

Most of your decisions about buildings and accessories will be made as you develop your railroad system. Having a plan does not mean that you must decide at the outset just exactly what you are going to do and in what order. It means only that you have a general direction in which you are heading and that most of your purchases and construction will go in the same direction. There is still plenty of flexibility, plenty of room for choices and time for changes of mind. You may plan to get more freight cars
at the first opportunity, of the type that suits the character of your system, but change your mind and buy a few additional track sections instead, to add another siding. As a matter of fact, if you add too many cars when you still have limited trackage, your train will overcrowd your lines, hamper easy operations, and look like a busy freight yard whether that's what you have or not. You may start on accessories and scenery soon after your track is laid, become fascinated with actual operation, and change your budget plans to allow for another locomotive right away, with postponement of certain accessories.

Such changes of interest and scheduled acquisitions are fine. Whatever gives you greatest pleasure in your hobby —that's what you should do. But try to make most of your improvements fit your general plan. Unless you have money to burn, you will not want to buy new items on a hit-or-miss basis.

"But I'm not sure yet what kind of railroad I want, "you might say. "I can't decide until 1 work with the trains awhile and learn what phase gives me the greatest pleasure."

That's only natural. But you will, it is assumed, run your trains on the floor for a certain period after getting them and from this you'll learn a good deal. You may even try two or three different layouts on a 4' x 6' or 4' x 8' table without even nailing down the track sections. The next step, when you begin to have the first ideas about what you would like to do, is to make some sketches. It doesn't matter if you cannot draw well; these sketches are for yourself and perhaps your partners in the enterprise.

Draw in a layout that appeals to you, then try placing a station here, a house there, a road running diagonally across the table, with warning signals at the crossings.

Mark off the area that will be a farm, another that will contain a hill. Remember that real railroads curve their tracks for a reason and yours should do the same rather than curve just because it is approaching the end of the table. A mountain, a hill, a river, a lake, a big factory, a. mine—all these are reasons for curves. Where there is a siding, there is always some reason for it. Put the reason down on your sketch, whether it is station, stockyard, or other structure that requires a line of railroad track. As you make your sketch—or perhaps your fourth or fifth sketch—you will find yourself altering your layout here and there to accommodate the structures or terrain which you want or know should be in this spot or that.

When you have a rough sketch that seems just about right, get out the pike planner, the scale ruler with all types of track shapes, and diagram the layout to scale.

With the changes made at this stage, you will be approaching a more definite idea, in your own mind, as to the personality and character of your railroad system. And at this point you might well give it a name. Nothing helps to bring a new railroad, or even a projected railroad, to life quite so much as giving it a real name.

When your scale drawing is fixed to your satisfaction, transfer the details to the top of your table. Looking at it full size may cause you to make further changes and refinements. Even if you don't plan to do more than lay track for at least six months, it will give you satisfaction to know about the other items—or some of them—that will occupy the new world you are creating. No worlds are made overnight, but all worlds are better for a little foresight.

Perhaps your first layout will be small but you plan to enlarge it later. Proper planning will eliminate a great deal of work later when changes are made. You may begin with a 4' x 6' table, knowing that at a later date you will add to it another 4' x 6' table, at right angles to form an L, or across one end to form a T shape, or end to end or side by side. In this event, you might sketch the entire layout in advance, then alter part of it so as to fit on one table at the outset. Where tracks might go from one table to another in the final layout, curve them around into an oval for the small table. At the same time, draw up at least a general idea of the placing of terrain features and various structures.

Your final large pike may have on it a village or town with a terminal and enough sidings to form a freight yard, some farmland and rolling country, and finally at the far end some mountains for a tunnel. Your first 4' x 6' or 4' x 8' table can be laid out to contain one of these elements. Keep the first table relatively flat and without the most difficult scenery, postponing the more complicated track laying and building until you have more experience. This means that your first table can be the village and freight yards, since all yards must be on level ground. But towns demand numerous buildings, streets, homes, lights, and so on; you may not want to tackle so many items at the beginning. Then make your first table contain the farmland, with one or two nouses, a road, some barns, fences, very few trees; and perhaps a small station.

For each kind of layout there are many suitable cars and accessories, as well as locomotives. While it is impossible in one book to describe and picture the many things you will find in your train catalogue and store, it might be a good idea to mention the more or less standard items available everywhere.

First, locomotives. As you know, the two most important types are steam engines and diesels. A steam engine always carries a tender filled with coal and water, the coal to burn and thus turn the water into steam. The expanding steam drives a piston which pushes a rod which in turn moves the driving wheels. Although the power is, of course, electrical in a model railroad, the boilers, pistons, rods, and wheels are all accurate copies of real locomotives.

There are several different types of steam locomotives, which axe usually identified in terms of their wheel arrangement (Fig. 60 See Page 97). Small wheels of most locos are called pilot wheels. Next come the big drivers. Under the cab is the trailing truck and its wheels. Switchers usually have no pilot or trailer wheels, since they operate at low speeds through many switches; thus they may be 0-4-0, 0-6-0, or 0-8-0.

The locomotive commonly called the Atlantic type is 4-4-2, meaning that its pilot truck has four small wheels, there are four big drivers, and two wheels on the trailing truck. The Pacific type is 4-6-2, the Hudson 4-64, the Northern 4-8-4. There are others, but these are the kinds most commonly found.

Diesel locomotives work on an entirely different prin- ciple in real railroading. The oilburning diesel engine runs an electric generator which supplies current to motors. It is, therefore, an electric locomotive which makes its own electricity instead of picking it up from a third rail or overhead wire. Model diesels run by electric motors, of course, but get their current from the rails. In all other respects, however, they are accurate copies of their prototypes, as seen in Fig. 61. (See Page 98)

The diesel switcher, or "yard goat," is short and stubby and efficient. Regular passenger and freight locos are made in two types of units. One, called the "A" unit, contains the cab, motors, generator, and diesel engines, plus all other necessary equipment. An A unit can run alone, or two A units can be run back to back, giving double power but with just one set of controls. This locomotive does not need to turn around to go in the opposite direction, as a steam loco would on a normal run.

There is also a "B" unit with diesel power, which has no cab but has motors, generators, and engines, controlled from the cab of an A unit, to which it is always attached when used. If even more power is needed, the diesel units are hooked together as A-B-A, a truly powerful triple lo- comotive easily controlled from the cab at either end. In model diesels, motors are placed in the A units only.

There are plenty of cars for both diesels and steam locomotives, as seen in Figs. 62 and 63 (See Pages 99 and 100)— streamlined Pullman cars, Vista Dome cars, combination baggage and club cars, combination lounge and observation cars, in addition to the old regulation coaches. Pullmans, baggage cars, observations, and combination cars.

Action cars are included, with a railway post office car that picks up a bag of mail from a stanchion, a baggage car that can be loaded by remote control from a loading platform and even unloaded at stations along the way.

Freight cars are varied, colorful, authentic as to markings, heralds, and many details. There are tank cars, gondola cars, cement cars, boxcars, cattle cars, hoppers, refrigerator cars, chemical cars, flatcars—some with depressed centers for huge items that must be shipped by rail—and finally, of course, cabooses. There is action by remote control in this field, too, with an automobile car that unloads, a dump car for coal or gravel, a car with logs that can be dumped beside the paper mill beside the right-of-way.

Among the most interesting and active cars are those belonging to the work train—cars with floodlights that cast a powerful beam on the wreck, which is then hauled out of the way by the working crane on another car. Behind this is usually carried the Work and Boom car, serving as a kind of crane tender. Finally, a track-cleaning car actually cleans and dries the track as it moves along, through the action of felt wipers.

Some accessories and buildings have already been mentioned in this chapter, but there are many more—water towers, aircraft beacons, floodlight towers, signal towers, girder and trestle bridges, school buildings, roadside diners, street lights, and signals of many kinds, such as semaphores for switches or for block systems, crossing lights that flash red on and off as a train approaches, and some that ring bells.
To supplement the rolling stock of your line there are handcars which reverse automatically. Figs. 64 and 65 (See Pages 101 and 102) show some of the accessories for your pike.

In hobby stores you will find scores more of buildings and accessories, and you can make almost anything you want. If you don't know how to go about it, there are plans and complete instructions available, or buildings in kit form. After you've made a few of these from plans, you will be able to improvise your own from odds and ends lying around the house.

There is no limit, with all these pieces of equipment available, to the things you can make your railroad do. Pick almost any line in the country as your prototype and you will be able to carry out the same general idea, whether your principle source of revenue is passengers, packages, automobiles, logs, coal, oil, cattle, or what you will. Combine these features in any way you wish, but make your layout, your buildings, cars, locos, equipment, and scenery fit the picture. If you plan ahead for realism, you will have a properly functioning railroad. A model railroad that not only looks right but operates like a real railroad will give you pleasure for as many hours, months, and years as you wish to spend with your pike.

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