Final Preparations

Now that I had finally finished with the benchwork and put down the base of foam, it was time to see how things would actually fit on the layout. First I drew in the most of the track plan and then began placing cardboard mock-ups of the major buildings I hope to use. Once again this proved to be rather frustrating. I have already had to make many compromises to allow for the space I have available and now it seemed that none of the scenes I have visualized were going to fit either. Finally after many hours of pondering and moving buildings around I figured it out. It would required another slight modification to the base and benchwork but all the scenes I hoped to have on the layout should fit.
Although I don't
think I'll be able to have passenger trains due to the tight radius curves I still wanted a depot andI wanted it in a particular place. I also had wanted an oil dealership, a coal dealer and a furntiture factory and lumber yard, all industries that would be located in the mountains of NC. And I will have my truss bridge over a river and hopefully I can develop the scenery making skills to do a decent river and waterfall.

First Structure.

Well, it's been almost exactly two years since I last updated this site. Mainly because I hadn't done anything. Life kind of got in the way again and my interest had been focused in other directions, but recently I've gotten my motivation back. I did finally finish the last of the benchwork and laid down the base layer of foamboard. Now I am starting on laying out the sub-roadbed As soon as I make some progress on that I'll add another update. In the meantime, this is the first structure I've built that will eventually be on the layout. I liked it because it reminds me of the tourist traps my brother and I would beg our parents to stop at when we were on vacations in the mountains, especially in Cherokee.

Once I place it on the layout, I'll be detailing it a little more. A little funny I guess that my first structure is not railroad related but is definetly a part of the flavor of the area I hope to represent. It will be along the road on the edge of town close to the river and the eventual roadside picnic area.

The Track Plan

I've been busy and not had too much time to work on things but now that I have decided what features I want on the pike, I have been able to finalize the track plan. It is obvious from the drawing that I am neither an artist nor a draftsman, but hopefully you can get an idea of what I am planning. The dimensions of the allocated space are 15' x 9.5' with the width of 36". As mentioned before, due to the space restrictions, the loops will only have a radius of 16". This will restrict me to using small motive power and short rolling stock. That is fairly easy to do within the era I am modeling. I will however be unable to use passenger equipment and some of the larger, more modern steam power, but certain compromises had to be made. The remaining curves will be about 30" radius for better appearance and operation.
The shorter leg of the "L" will be a more scenic area with a river crossed by a 150' Warren Truss Bridge and a 40ft Deck Girder. A road will pass under the deck girder leading into the town which will be located along the longer side of the "L". I hope to add a roadside picnic area so motorist can enjoy the view during lunch. Most of the loop will be concealed in a tunnel so the sharp curves there want be so obvious.
The town will have a passing track and several spurs leading to some small business's. These will include a small lumberyard, a coal dealer, an oil distributor, a small furniture factory and possibly a farm supply and mill. There will also be a few small downtown buildings, a church a few houses, and a gas station. On the road leading into town will be a small tourist trap reminiscent of the roadside souvenir stands that were popping up in the area as tourism was growing in the mountains. Now that the plan is complete, I do the last few finishing touches on the support and benchwork and begin putting down the foam base that the trackwork will be mounted on.

So; what took so long?

Well, a combination of many things but mainly the constraints of the space I have available. There are so many choices in the hobby these days that it is really hard to decide exactly what kind of layout to model. You can choose from so many different past era's up to the present. There are so many different road names or you can make one up. You can do short lines, branch lines, main lines, logging railroads, mining, industrial, city, country, mountains, east and west, anything in the real or imaginary world is possible. What kind of layout? Switching, loops, point to point, set up for operation or just a backdrop for fancy modeling or scenery. Then there is scale. G, O, S, HO, N, Z or a narrow-guage version of any of those? The photo shows a side by side comparison of HO and N scale. With all the choices available , my first choice was always HO scale and in the transition era in an eastern mountain setting. I love steam engines and 1st generation diesels and it is the era I grew up in so it was a natural choice. Also HO has the biggest selection of choices in suppliesand equipment
That is where the problem and frustration with my space came from. One of my main criteria for a layout was that I could sit back and watch the trains roll through my imaginary world when I didn't want to be actively operating or switching. This would require a loop of some type. In order to operate certain types of locos and rolling stock, you have to maintain a minimum radius for curves and loop sections. Because of the space and location it was about impossible to come up with any sort of track plan that would fit my space. You wouldn't believe some of the options I came up with. They all required taking on extra space in the house, cutting holes in walls etc and still every plan had a flaw in it that after days of planning would in the end be too impractical.
So, plan B was to use N scale and hope that in the future I may be able to build my dream layout in a larger space. I decided that I would not duplicate in N what I wanted in HO but would instead model the modern era. There is much more equipment, although more and more transition era stuff is coming out monthly. But in the structures there is still very little in the way of modern structures available so either era would require a compromise. I went ahead and worked out many track plans and finally chose what I wanted but I was still not happy. I could come up with a great track plan and N scale is very conducive to running long trains and building impressive scenery in a small space, but I still had some problems with N. As I mentioned the structures but also the details. I like the detailed scenes and the amazing structure kits available in HO and that is one of my main attractions to the hobby. I know there are many people that have done some fabulous things in N with details but they are so small that I can hardly see them. They look great in a well planned, blown up photo but in person I just can't see things that well.
So now I had to make a decision. No matter what choice I made it was going to be a compromise so I had to just decide what the most important things were and plan to use those and be happy. And so after nearly starting a modern n-scale layout( which still has some appeal to me) I have made the firm decision to do an HO layout in the transition era.
I also considered doing a Civil War era layout. I am a big fan of the history of that era and I love the old trains like the "General" but there is almost no prototype equipment available and a person would really need a lot of skill at scratch-building rolling stock and structures. There are however a lot of figures available through Musket Miniatures and some other companies.
In my next post I will detail my plans a bit more than I did in the introductory post and then on with the construction!

The Beginning-Final Chapter

The model trains were ignored during my teen years and it wasn't until I spotted a magazine at the newstand in 1976 that I my interest was re-ignited. I'm not sure if it was Railroad Model Craftsman or Model Railroader but I just remember being amazed at the level of artistry I saw in some of the photos of layouts as well as the new equipment that was becoming available. I was married by then and living in a small apartment so I was going to build a small layout that could be rolled under the bed. I never got much further than laying half of the track before we moved. We found a basement apartment that had enough room and I put up a 4'x8' up on a table but soon after laying the track, we once again moved and by then I had given up trying and lost interest. It would be another 15 years later and after my divorce that I once again found a magazine in the hobby shop and decided to use my spare time to build a layout. I never did build it but over all those years I remained an armchair modeler. I continued to subscribe to modeling magazines, read books and also started observing and occasionally photographing trains. I accumulated some items that I hoped would eventually end up on a layout . The photo above is one kit of a handcar shed that I painted and built several years ago. That is basically the story. In my next posting I will try to explain why it has taken over 11 years to finally get started since I bought the cabinets to go under where I eventually planned to build.

The Beginning-Part 2

I'm not sure exactly when it was my parents bought our first HO guage train set but it was probably for Christmas when I was 7 or 8 years old. The first set was a Tyco with a o-4-o Dockside loco lettered for the Pennsylvania RR. Soon we aquired this W&ARR 4-4-0, a replica of the "General", a famous Civil War train. It was my favorite because it reminded me of Tweetsie, although in reality it wasn't very close to the engines used at Tweetsie.
We moved to Garner just after Christmas when I was 8 years old. My Dad put up a 4'x8' layout in a corner of the basement. It was a simple layout with a big loop, a passing track and three spurs.He built a tunnel with plaster and screen wire placed in the back corner. There was also a small bridge and a road was painted on the plywood which was painted green. It had a small depot, I think by Atlas and a farmhouse. That was the extent of the scenery and structures but this layout gave me hours and years of enjoyment. At some point we had added one other loco, a diesel F7 in New Haven livery.
About 4 years later my Dad bought us a pool table and the layout which was beginning to be neglected was taken down to make room for our new toy.

The Beginning- Part 1

The train in the photo is what started my lifelong love of trains. I have no recollection of when it was bought. I was probably only a year or two old. I just remember it being there as long as I can recall. It is an American Flyer O-27 guage set. The engine is a Chicago and North Western pacific style but the trailing truck is missing. The other cars are all still in great shape and could almost pass as being new. There are two other cars not in the photo that need some slight repairs. My Dad had it set up in our attic with the track spiked to the plywood flooring. There was no scenery or buildings that I can remember but I made up for it with imagination. One thing I really loved was that you could put light oil in the stack and it would chuff smoke like a real train. I had a little phonograph and a 45 rpm record of train sounds that I listened to over and over. Because of it being kept in the attic we could only play with it when it wasn't too hot or too cold. The loco stopped working by the time I was 8 or 9 years old and we never had it fixed and the whole set was put into storage. About 20 years ago or so I decided to get it from my parents house and put it on static display in my living room and that is where it has been ever since.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog of the Smoky Mountain and Southern Railroad. After many years of starts and stops and much frustration and indecision , I have finally decided to contruct a working model railroad in my living area. I hope that by documenting the progress of construction on this blog that I will stay motivated to actually get the work done. I can't even tell you exactly how many years that have passed since I first decided that I wanted to do this but it has been at least 10 years. I bought the cabinets you can see in the picture specifically for the purpose of building the railroad over them and using the cabinets as storage. At this point I have nearly finished with the benchwork and have the backdrop in place. It was probably 4 or5 years ago that I started the benchwork. There used to be a lot more but I tore it down and started over. The backdrop has been in place over a year or more. The cardboard squares that you see at random around the shelving are mock-ups of some buildings that will eventually be built. they are helping me in planning what I can actually fit into the space and finalize the track plan I will be using. Right now they are not in the actual place they will end-up and I still have more to make. That's all for now. In my next post I will explain how I got interested in the hobby and what has taken so long to finally get moving.