Is that a Spacemouse Byeline?

Chip, I very much enjoyed the article. 

Spot On

"Until you've built a large layout, you have no idea how much work is involved." Charlie Comstock

So true! About 18 months ago I had an opportunity to rebuild my layout, formerly housed in an 8' x 16' space, in a space 27' x 31'. "Oh Boy!" I thought. Finally, the opportunity to build the "LOMD" (Layout Of My Dreams). Fast forward 18 months to today.

What's done? The benchwork has been built (for the second time - the first iteration was a complete disaster for a number of reasons). The foam board has been painted and installed. The track has been laid - tentatively; I'm still making changes to the track plan from an operational standpoint.

That's it. No substantial wiring. No scenery to speak of. And the dust and spiders are starting to take over.

And despite the size, I still don't have enough yard and siding space for all of my rolling stock -- even after selling almost 200 freight cars.

The moral of this little experience for me is "Be careful what you ask for ..."

P.S. I'm thinking seriously about downsizing significantly to something I can more easily maintain, not to mention complete in my lifetime.

Bear Creek & South Jackson

This is a great article. However I think that interviews leave themselves open to voice overs rather than, or as a suplement to, full print versions. This way you can spend more time viewing the photos as Charlie talks about them and points out what what one is looking at.

Irv

Voice Over

Irv,

I couldn't agree more.  Perhaps a narrated slide show would have been the way to go?

Bear Creek and South Jackson

G'day Charlie, I enjoyed reading about the Bear Creek and South Jackson.

Please to help me put it into a little more perspective, you talk about wanting to run 30 car trains. How many locos would you typically put on a 30 car train?

About how long in feet and inches would such a 30 car train be?

The track plan on page 18 appears to be about the size of a good two car garage how did you think 30 car trains looked on alayout that size? They didn't overwhealm the layout did they?

Regards Ken

Hi Ken,

Hi Ken,

Glad you liked the interview.

In HO scale in my 1952 era most cars were 40' long. There were some 50 footers and some shorter ones too so on average a car would be 40'. In HO 40' is just abouit 6". So a 30 car train is about 15' long without locos or caboose.

I typically put two 1st generation diesels or a cab forward on a 30 car train. So lets add about another 18" or so for motive power on the head end. And add another 5" for the caboose.

Which makes the longest trains about 17' long.

I deliberately made the loco consists a bit underpowered for such a train on my ruling grades. The ruling grades on both my old and current railroads come in at about 2.8%. To reliably get up the hill I run helpers. I prefer using a second crew for the helper unit (adds to the fun - well at least some folks think so). Because my trains generally don't need much help I typically use a single loco. On the current BC&SJ I often assign a Bachman Spectrum USRA 2-10-2 light  as helper (which adds another 14 or 15" to the train length so now its out to around 18').

An 18' train looks pretty decent on my current layout. It's long enough so that when you're railfanning it starts to feel like "when is this train gonna end!" which is about the right length (to me anyway).

To make this ok I've tried hard to keep towns separated by some distance. On the current layout Mill Bend and Oakhill are a bit over 50' apart. Running at the track speed (for helpers) of 20mph it takes about 5 minutes to leave Mill Bend, travel up the 2.8% grade and pull into Oakhill. Between Oakhill and the temporary Salem is only about 20 feet or so but if I get it to fully built there will be over 40' from Oakhill to Bear Creek Yard (on the peninsula).

On my previous layout I also was trying to keep the towns as far apart as possible. If I'd built it to completion towns would have averaged around 35' (or a bit more apart).

There are two things nice about 'distant' towns:

1) it takes a lot more time to get between the towns making the run feel a bit more realistic to the crews. To me distance should be measured in minutes of travel time when operating at the appropriate scale speed. Ideally I'd like a 'distance' of between 5 and 10 minutes separating towns. This can either be a longer run with higher speeds or a shorter run with lower speeds

2) there are fewer towns which means fewer structures to build/buy

Drawbacks to 'distant' towns are:

1) Since I'm modeling western Oregon there are TONs of trees required to fill in all that scenery space

2) there are fewer towns

3) need more layout for a given number of towns

Overall I think the town spacing I have now works fairly well but I've got a close to 1100 sqft train room. The previous layout occupied a 328 sqft footprint so it was heavily multi-decked to get enough mainline length. There is a temptation to add more decks but I'd recommend doing practical research before embarking on an ambitious contruction project - that is, find people who have multi deck layouts and visit them (and if possible join an op session on them). Pick their owners brains about construction techniques and little details like how did they decide to build which deck first - once a deck is in place it will interfere with constructing the deck above or below it - think in terms of wiring on an upper deck or installing track/scenery on a lower deck!

I hope this helped,

Charlie

You caught me.

Okay Mr. Simon, you caught me. I'm the mouse.

Charlie,

How's that third hobby coming alone. Last I saw you had just the beginnings of movies.  

Mouse that Roared

Hi Chip,

Well, I'm working on getting more scenery done so the layout will stop being the "Bare" Creek. When that happens I'm hoping to produce a "Welcome to the Bear Creek" with eye candy, lots of information about the design, construction, and operation of the layout and a couple of 'how to' segments. Of course Horace Fithers would have a lot to say about stuff...

Joe and I are also planning to shoot another Op Session Live video at my next session (if Joe can tear himself away from his MRH duties for an evening). If this happens it should be available from model-trains-video.com sometime in the 2nd half of February. I've no idea when a "Welcome to the Bear Creek" video would be available.

Cheers,

Charlie

The Bare Creek

Charlie,

It sounds like lots of great things are coming down the track from the Bear Creek!  I just ordered the set of three OP's DVD's from model-train-video.com and am looking forward to checking out operations on your layout.  Was that video shot on a previous Bear Creek or the current in-progress layout?

Is "Welcome to the Bear Creek" going to be a feature in MRH, (hint hint) or is that a model-trains-video.com endeavor as well?

Kudo's to both you and Chip for a great article.  I'm still looking for some genuine Charlie Comstock voice over work though. )

'Bare' creek

Kevin,

I'll continue to write about various aspect of the 'Bare' Creek in my 'Up the Creek' article.

The Op Session Live 3 video was shot on the current (3rd version) BC&SJ.

If a 'Welcome to the Bear Creek' shows up (and at this point I'm not making promises) it would be a model-trains-video.com

Hope you really enjoy the videos. If you have questions about my operations after viewing OSL3 let us know and we'll try to get them addresses in the next bare creek OSL.

Cheers,

Charlie

Inviting Myself in

Charlie,

All I know is that I'm planning a working vacation (all I need is a phone and internet) and when I'm in your neck of the woods, I want ops sessions on both your layouts.

Large Layout

I agree !!  I had a big On30 layout back in 2000. It had a little more than 330 ft of mainline and it was fully scenicked. It was published on the third issue of O Scale Magazine and it was very nice. But it is a lot of work. Espoeically if most of the time you are the only operator. I eventually tored it down and down sized it. It was more of a headache than an enjoyment. Again, be careful for what you ask for !!!

Thought I was the only one

Thanks for the interview Charlie.

There's not many model railroaders in my area. It's just me and one other serious model railroader. I'm experiencing some of the same things that you went through on your Bear Creek RR. The task of building a RR of this size is overwhelming, at times, not to mention the cost of "doing it right"! I cannot express the importance of having a fellow modeler to bounce ideas off of. I also believe that you spend as much time designing and planning as you do actually building the RR. But it pays off in the long run with good operations and a smile on your face!

My layout is coming along nice but with a family and a business to run I have to make the most of modeling time. Can you give us some ideas on staying organized and on the right track (pun intended) for completing a layout of this size.

Thanks again for the great interview.

Tony Howard

You;re welcome!

You're welcome Tony, and thanks also to Chip (the interviewer).

Planning does play a huge part in building a large railroad. It's altogether too easy to paint oneself into a corner if the final destination isn't understood before starting. Of course, you need to have some confidence that the plan is feasible and the only way to do that is to have some understanding of what it is you want and how to achieve it. And that requires some amount of experience! It's a bad idea to start off with a 1000 sqft design for a first railroad unless you have so much time and money that making a 'chainsaw railroad' that size isn't a problem...

As far as making the best use of limited modeling time goes...

• Examine the master plan for possible 'stages' of completion - it's a good idea to have designed these stages of construction into the master plan (but I sure didn't do that - read my 'Serendipity' column!).
• Working on a smaller part of a layout to some degree of completion helps - building all the benchwork, then installing all the roadbed, then doing all the track work, then all the wiring, then building all the scenery, then all the structures, then all rolling stock, etc. is a good way to lose enthusiasm. I was able to get a big enough chunk of the Bear Creek running to have op sessions. Then I started tackling scenic details. But I was still building structures and rolling stock while the track wasn't all laid yet.
• Don't think about how much is left to do on the layout (or even for one area). Instead pick a one evening project (like building a retainting wall or installing a set of turnouts or putting a decoder in a loco). Or work on a particular part of the layout - like building and installing a bridge or roughing in the scenery in a place where the joists are showing through, or installing some lighting in the ceiling. By not thinking in terms of ALL the stuff that needs to be done you'll help keep from feeling overwhelmed.
• Once you reach the point of having enough track laid to do some running - by all means do so. If you get a loop of track down and start running trains on it then go ahead and run the trains. I think it was John Armstrong who remarked in Track Planning for Realistic Operation that if you get to the point where you're having so much fun running trains that you never get any more construction done that you're really living! But being able to run trains will really help enthusiasm.
• Building a small area of the layout, even 4-8 feet long, to scenery being complete will provide enough thrill to encourage more construction.

If however the layout tour chairman for the local NMRA region/division comes knocking looking for layouts to put on a tour don't volunteer (even though this is a huge motivator to make progress) unless your spouse and family buys in to having you live in the train dungeon for a couple of months before the show...

And see if you can get some other modlers in the area to give you a hand once a month or on alternate months. If you don't trust their skills pick jobs that can't be messed up (no track work or wiring!). Having company in the train room on a work night is a great way to cement friendships and make progress on the layout. And recruit operators.

Start formal op sessions as soon as possible - they don't have to be very formal or TT&TO or TWC or have a fully functional CTC system. They can be as simple as a tab-on-car forwarding system running under mother-may-I-dispatching. Just get started. After a while you can try out things like switch lists or car cards and way bills and track warrants or time tables. If you get to the point of radio headsets or telephones and a separate dispatchers desk that's great - if not that's great too. It's only my opinion but our trains are more fun when they're moving, and even more fun when their movement causes the people driving them to interact. Or maybe there are a bunch of train nerds standing around watching a train or two run and that's great too. But do have some sort of op sessions

Hope this wasn't too long (I do sometimes go on so...)

Charlie

Bear Creek

Hi Charlie -

     I really liked the story and wanted to say that your style of relating is very much like the mentoring that is needed to get people encouraged in creating their own layouts. I think folks need to hear about operating a layout and to be encouraged to take the step past just running their trains. This article is a good "starter" piece that I think would be useful for introducing railroading to folks who are just starting to show an interest. They would realize that building a great layout is not something you just do out of the gate but it is an "organic" process of trying and starting over and using others expertise and ideas as well as thinking through the design stages over and over. Come to think of it, that is how most great products are made.

     Enough rattling on, you deserve the praise you are getting and I hope you keep up the mentoring as we need all of the mentors we ca get.

Dave