Hi All, The great news that SHS is going to have a new builder soon got me
inspired to design a layout using SHS sectional track and turnouts just to see
what was possible.
I concentrated on making it interesting to operate and with easy to build
scenery. Since we are always limited in our layout space I decided the best way
to get a realistic layout would be to model a place where the real railroads
were also limited in space so it depicts a New York pocket terminal, somewhere
in Brooklyn or the Bronx, maybe between the CNJ terminal and the DL&W Harlem
transfer.
If you are not familiar with these terminals check out Phil Goldstein's site
http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/ht.html
for lots of photos and info.
The layout is served by a carfloat that holds about 15 cars. The operations
are centered on a circular freight house/warehouse , a coal dealer with
elevated coal bunker, multiple team tracks one equipped with a traveling gantry
crane, and a row of warehouses or industries along the top wall which could
include a frozen food or meat storage facility. Depending on the the traffic
desired the circular freight house could be partially leased to a business such
as a flour wholesalers or similar. The long track at the top wall could also
include cement silos if one wanted to run cement cars. The multiple team tracks
could feature unloading equipment for various commodities like lumber, bricks,
autos, etc. Pretty much anything you can imagine came thru these terminal at
one time or another.I've seen photos of chicken cars, cement canister gondolas,
wine tankers, large industrial boilers on flatcars, etc. There's a small loco
service facility at the bottom right for an SHS SW-1 or a RasinRiver GE
44tonner.
The scenery consists of a lot of paving for the team tracks and the truck
access, a small area of river water, a 290 foot long carfloat, a transfer
bridge, a large circular freight house, a long warehouse/industrial building on
the top wall, a large coal silo complex with unloading pit for SHS hoppers, a
scale house/office building at the top right corner, and the small engine
house. Not an overwhelming amount of track or scenery to build.Everything is
pretty flexible and could be re-arranged to suit whatever cars and business one
wanted to model but this gives a start. I haven't counted the car spots but I'm
sure a large collection of freight cars could fit and more could be rotated on
and off by the carfloat which typically would run twice a day or more.
I'd probably build in some storage shelves under the layout or close by to
handle all the traffic. An operating system would need to be developed to keep
everything sorted out which would be interesting for those who like to research
history of rail traffic.
I don't actually have any SHS sectional track or turnouts to measure so I
scaled them from Bob Nicholson's neat Illinois Midland track plan :>) My plan
would need some tweaking if anyone actually tried to build it with SHS track
but I think there's enough room to fit everything in with some adjusting.
Building it with flextrack and handlaid switches would be a piece of cake as
far as the geometry is concerned. The SHS track is 25 inch radius on the inside
loop and 30 inch on the outside loop, the prototype Harlem Transfer terminal
had 90 foot radius which is about 17 inch radius in S scale so these curves are
plenty big enough !
These Terminals were built around 1900 and lasted till about 1970 so many
types or freight cars would look at home and lots of different era trucks and
cars could be displayed on the paved areas depending on what era the builder
liked. Everything from wooden truss rod boxcars to SHS covered hoppers could be
appropriate.
Layout plan is in the photos section in an album called SHS terminal, maybe
someone will get inspired to build something similar for their existing SHS
cars or build it and then go out and by some of the new cars coming soon?
Regards, DaveBranum
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
