Required Reading

I like track planning books, I like to see other peoples thoughts and ideas on paper. I have a lot in my collection and just like everything else, some are better than others. A I work on the plan for phase 2 construction I have come to realize I keep coming back to these books. While they all are not track planning books the do all have valuable information.

John Armstrong's books might be a bit dated but I think some of his ideas border on sheer genius. When you consider that his Canidagua Southern plan is over 50 years old and is still better than at least 70% of the plans we see presented on the Internet forums I have to give the man some respect and mine his work for some good ideas.

Tony Koester's Lessons learned book is interesting considering he lived with the layout for 25 years and tells what did and didn't work out. I normally only learn from my own mistakes but I'll listen to experience and try to avoid a few.

Lance Mindheim's are my newest additions and I think they are among the best. His plans are nice and open, not too much track, or too many elements crammed into the space. I also like that he has drawn the plans in CAD so we know they could be built as drawn. Some of the plans use some often over looked prototypes for inspiration. The fact that they are self published is very interesting to me. I wonder if this was done to better control content, or as some sort of cost control.

The others just have good useful information in them.

The Current Track Plan

Here is my track plan as the layout is currently. It has a lot of short comings, most of wich I plan to correct during phase two construction.
I built this as a test bed for testing my bench work and track laying skills. When I started this project a few years ago I was concerned that I would have expansion and contraction issues because my layout is in an unfinished basement. So far I haven’t had any bench work or track work issues, derailments are very rare. My original plan was heavily influenced by the HOG layout plan.
More on it can be found here: http://hogrr.blogspot.com/
The layout as built faithfully represents the track in the city of Columbia as it was in the time I’m modeling, 1963-64. The plan for phase two is to model the rest of the branch to its main line connection at Centralia.

LCL Freight

From the information I have dug up LCL freight was big business on the Wabash Columbia
Branch. I have tried to include this trafic on my model of the branch. Here we see the local Sears truck picking up some boxes of new products for the stores stock. Representing this interaction of customer and railroad was a design goal of the layout.

Just Some New Paint

It is amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do to improve a space. Now that my workshop is all repainted and cleaned up it's time to continue around the rest of the basement.

My Number One Hobby

When people ask if I have a hobby, before I mention trains, cars, or photography I tell them my wife and I own a 110 year old home. The project list is never ending, we are starting to get to the want to do list and not major repairs or required updates. My layout is in our unfinished basement. As I plan phase 2 of construction controlling dust and making the basement a more comfortable place to be is high on the list of things to do. Part of this is dust control. I don't have plans to "finish" the basement but I do plan to drylock the walls and floors. I'd like to install a drop ceiling but it is already low so I will be exploring other options. So today I started Painting the walls of my workshop. Not exciting layout progress but important infrastructure improvements.

How It All Started

I grew up around trains, both prototype and model. My father was, and still is, an avid rail fan and accomplished photographer and model railroader. His main interest has always been in junctions and the associated interlockings. I on the other hand have always been more attracted to the out of the way weed covered branches and short lines. He had the Kalmbach book Railroads You Can Model in his collection, it had a chapter on the Wabash Columbia Branch, I think I wore thru the pages.



I was hooked and thought about building a layout based on it for many years before I actually started on my current layout depicting the branch in the late summer of 1963. This blog will cover the construction and operation of this layout.