Richmond Pacific RR in a Bedroom

My friend Chuck is considering plans for a new N scale layout in a 10 x 12 spare bedroom.  It is always interesting to talk to people in the planning stage of a new layout. Folks at this point are often working through possibilities for prototypes, locations and other important design decisions. Prototype choice  is important, but I think there are three additional important questions that really need to be worked through before design should be started - type of operations, degree of compression and degree of accuracy.

Operations vs Free form

The number one question to be answered when you are considering building a layout is what kind of operation that do you expect from your layout. Operations can be as simple as running trains continuously so as to enjoy the sight of your rolling stock collection moving smoothly around the layout. It can also be as simple as switching any car on any spur to wherever you like on the layout.

On the other hand, your operational goals can be more toward the other end of the operations spectrum, where prototype operations are faithfully replicated on trackage that resembles that of your favorite prototype. Operation at this level often involves interchange and switching operations.  If you are into passenger operation, the equivalent would be passenger train operation to schedule with terminal operations to make up and breakdown trains.

Scenes vs. Spaghetti

Day-dreaming about a future layout has few physical or financial limitations, and it often comes as a bit of a shock to see what actually fits in our available space. Notions of modelling substantial parts of our favorite prototype eventually have to yield to reality, and we have to make important choices about which parts of the larger system we’ll recreate in miniature and enjoy as we run our scale trains.

Which brings me to the second key question to be answered before firing up the track planning tools - where is my balance point between one big scene for the whole layout and a number of separate geographically distinct locations. The answer to this question determines how many scenes you’ll be creating on your layout.  When there is a lot of space for the layout, this question is less of an issue. If you have plenty of space, your scenes can be spaced out and well-separated.

For many railroaders though, space is often limited in some way, and we usually want to squeeze in more scenes than we have actual space for. If you really want particular scenes to be included, the other scenes will have less and less of the available layout space and will necessarily become compressed, sometimes severely.  So the choice of how distinct each of your scenes will be from one another is very important at the planning stages.

Accurate vs. Representative

The third question to guide your plan is how accurate do you want your track to be. Sometimes, it is really important to have the tracks on our layout be exactly as they are in the prototype, track for track, switch for switch. This is especially true at key junctions or yards. Space limitations inevitably put pressure on fidelity of track configurations, causing us to go with something that is representative rather than an accurate depiction of the track layout, We can start with the actual layout then delete tracks, use lower number switches, shorten things, shuffle a few elements, flip to mirror images or, in the extreme, just use the prototype location name with no visual correlation between the modeled track and the prototype.

The prototype is big and spread out, more than we realize, until it comes time to convert the map to a model.  Most of the time, we design in the realm of “representative” with a few “accurates” thrown in where we can.

Chuck’s Design Guidelines

The answers to the above questions provide useful design parameters which guide the design toward something that is likely to be satisfying to build and operate. The goal here is to build a layout that provides a lot of enjoyment - without taking several attempts to get there - that captures the key aspects from our favorite prototype and most importantly, a layout that meets our operational expectations. Once the layout is built, it is the wrong end of the design curve to discover that the layout fails to operate as you would like.

Here’s where my friend Chuck lines up on the questions above:

Operations vs. Free form -Definitely interchange and switching operations though not sure to what level yet. Continuous running possibility would be good, especially for displaying the layout for visitors or when time is limited.

Scenes vs. Spaghetti - Not spaghetti. Distinct scenes as much as possible. Not sure how many, probably 3 - 5 which should fit well in the 10 x 12 space. The intent is to emphasize the “going somewhere and doing something” aspect of operating your train by passing through several distinct locations.

Accurate vs. Representative - Not especially hung up on particular track configurations, though keep things as representative as possible. Include key locations distinctive to the RPRC.

Chuck’s prototype interests cover various railroads including the Western Pacific, Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe/BNSF.  Importantly, he’s recognized that at lot of railroading enjoyment comes from a good amount of interchange and/or switching of freight cars. This is particularly true on medium and small layouts where the mainline run is inevitably somewhat limited.

While building a Tehachapi, Donner or Feather River route has some appeal, there is little in the way of switching on these lines. Chuck is leaning more toward a shortline with Class 1 connections which provides the best of both worlds - road freights and intensive switching.  More specifically, Chuck is  interested in the Richmond Pacific which provides all the raw materials listed above and has the advantage of connections with the BNSF and the UP. It is also only a short drive away for Chuck, which is great for getting pictures and observing operations. This last point should not be underestimated.

Richmond Pacific in a Bedroom

Armed with the above, I offered to create a plan for the Richmond Pacific for Chuck. I thought it would be interesting to see what would fit in a bedroom-sized space and to see how representative the layout could be. Would it be possible to capture the flavor of the prototype as well as including key operational aspects of this shortline?

Chuck’s space is a room measuring 10 x 12 feet. The layout can occupy three of the walls.  Here’s the first pass of the plan.

click for larger image

N Scale Richmond Pacific

Min radius - 16” BNSF, 15” RPRC
Minimum swtich - #7 BNSF, #6 RPRC
Maximum reach to switch or uncoupling point 12” on visible, 18” on staging
Maximum depth of visible layout to backdrop - 18”
Minimum aisle 36”

The layout captures several distinct scenes - Stege, Safeway siding, 3rd Street Yard, BNSF Siberia Lead. Each is a reasonable representation of the prototype location and all have been rendered in correct order. The staging at the rear of the layout represents BNSF Oakland on one end and BNSF Richmond on the other end. UP operations are not represented on the layout other than the simple UP interchange siding near Stege Wye included for the benefit of operations.

Safeway siding is the BNSF interchange with the RPRC and BNSF trains enter the layout from either end of staging. On the Richmond end, BNSF trains use the Siberia Lead to travel from Richmond Staging to the connection with the RPRC at the east end of the 23rd Street Yard. The Oakland local drops cars for the RPRC on one of the tracks of the 23rd Street Yard. BNSF trains then proceed to Stege taking the upper leg to reach BNSF Oakland (Staging) via the UP (not modeled).

Coming back the other way, BNSF trains enter the layout at Stege and proceed to Safeway siding. The Oakland local collects its cars from Safeway Siding and continue to Richmond Staging. There are variation on this including run-through stack trains, run-through bare-table trains and the Warm Springs local. Here’s a rendering of the Warm Springs train returning from Warm Springs.

(I added annotations to this clip and for some reason, known best to You Tube, the clip doesn’t play smoothly first time round. Click play, let the clip load until the pale red bar reaches the other side then move the slider back to the start and it should play normally with the train doing about 18mph not 80!! - SJC)

RPRC locals switch the Richmond industries adjacent to the 23rd Street Yard and travel to the Stege Wye, taking the lower leg to Hensley and North Richmond. The small peninsula for Hensley and North Richmond is divided by a backdrop to create two separate switching locations.  The Hensley area is switched with the use of the siding adjacent to Stege Wye. North Richmond has a slightly more complicated track arrangement that has only a small siding to facilitate runaround moves.

The layout could easily keep two to four operators busy as well as one crew member functioning as a dispatcher for the BNSF and roadmaster for the RPRC.

We’ll see if the design passes muster with Chuck, which is the important thing at this point.

- Coxy