No-Name Evolution

The No-Name Industrial Park track plan and indeed the layout itself has gone through a series of identity changes, geographical relocations, time periods, and just about any other change you can think of.  I'll describe a few of the more interesting points along the way.

I started off knowing I wanted some focus on industrial switching, but I was also thought I wanted some continuous running.  I had originally been thinking about modelling the 50s, the default time period of model railroading.  Once I realized how big an O scale turntable was going to be I decided steam power was not a wise use of my space.  I slid the time period ahead to the late 60s and early 70s.  The location was set in the area of western New York where I grew up.  So my first serious O scale plans were called the Elmira Industrial, placed in Elmira, NY circa 1970.

The Elmira Industrial, an early version

I managed to squeeze in a double track mainline, some staging, a small yard, a couple industries in Elmira itself, and an industrial branch.  At the end of the industrial branch was Thatcher Glass, a large glass bottle manufacturer.  And near the end was an interchange with the PRR.  Even at the time I drew the plan I knew better than to have a duck under - I just don't like them.  So I thought perhaps a drop leaf or something might do.  But that compromise, combined with the short length of the yard tracks, staging, and the over crowding of the industrial area made me have second thoughts.  When I started thinking about the tiny yard and how many cars it would have to handle in how many different blocks I realized the plan was out of balance with itself.

The next iteration of the plan did away with the duck under and therefore the mainline as well.  It still had staging though.  The general idea was that the mainline (which actually would exist in dummy form on the front edge of the layout near the yard throat) was implied, and trains would pick up and set out blocks in the yard.  In reality that meant and engine shoving a cut of cars in from a staging track and returning with a different block.  There was staging for east and west bound EL traffic (the railroad being modelled was the Erie Lackawanna), Lehigh Valley (which ran up from Sayre PA through Elmira to Horseheads, interchanging with the EL in Elmira), and a couple Pennsylvania tracks (PRR had trackage rights on the EL through Elmira).

The Elmira Industrial, a later version

The larger yard in both length and breadth would easily accommodate handling the inbound blocks, and classifying for various industries and the 4 different outbound blocks.  Thatcher Glass still occupied what you will recognize as the peninsula devoted to the N scale Palmer Industrial Park now, but it's based on a slightly earlier configuration of the prototype before the newer set of warehouses got built.

At that point construction got seriously under way, and the bottom part of the plan along the wall was built, plus a little bit up the left and right side walls.  I hand laid code 125 rail on wood ties, using Old Pullman turnout kits.  It was exciting - nothing beats the thrill of the first train run on hand laid track.

First train runs!

After the initial euphoria wore off I started to notice a few hiccups with the Old Pullman turnout kits and in the process of tinkering with them to improve them I learned more about turnouts and what to keep an eye out for.  Some inspection revealed that the one curved turnout kit I had purchased would require so much work to get the closure rails to properly line up with the frog, etc. that it might just be easier to start from scratch.  (I believe I may have ordered my turnouts at a bad time in Old Pullmans transition between owners, I would not assume my experience from some years back is any indication of their current product which I have heard good things about.)  If you look at the trackplan closely you'll notice that there are 6 or 7 curved turnouts in the yard throat area that are critical.  Any flaws in this area would make the layout a nightmare to operate.  And you'll notice that there are a lot of turnouts in general.  Doubts about my ability to get this layout operational began to set in.

Around this time two other things changed.  I started doing a lot more rail fanning, and began to get enamored with present day railroading.  (I don't use the term "modern", because various people use "modern" to refer to anything from a 1950 F unit to a 2010 genset.)  And Atlas starting making good quality O scale turnouts.  I started thinking about how to re-arrange the plan to use Atlas O turnouts.  Without the curved turnouts in the yard throat, the yard couldn't be nearly big enough to support the general operating scheme.  Major changes seemed to be in order.

The Corning Industrial

The result was the Corning Industrial plan.  Corning is about 10 miles west of Elmira in real life, and the former EL has gone through the Conrail stage and is now the Norfolk Southern.  This time the mainline was not even hinted at on layout, it was "over there" a the other end of the yard just past the top right corner of the room.  There was also no staging.  The assumption is that through trains, one eastbound and one westbound, would pick up outbound blocks and set out inbound blocks "overnight" - in other words between operating sessions.  At the start of an operating session two of the yard tracks would have the two inbound blocks on them.  A third track allowed for some storage.  The remaining two tracks were the through track and the runaround.  Not many tracks in number, but all pretty decently long, and I figured there would be enough space to sort things out without getting too crowded.  The parts of the layout with track already laid stayed untouched, with one exception - the second track and industry in the middle of the wall got removed in favor of a single larger industry.  The one remnant of the original plan lingers to this day in the No-Name Industrial - the jog in the middle of the track.  There's still a glass plant on the peninsula, but this time it's based on the Osram Sylvania plant in Wellsboro, PA.  The area formerly occupied by the yard was now planned to be an intermodal area.  Two tracks for auto racks, two tracks for intermodal flats.

Norfolk Southern uses big power for everything, and with the length of cuts I expected to be dealing with to sort out the yard it seemed like a two unit consist would not only be prototypical, but necessary.  I bought two Atlas O B40-8s.  A couple sample intermodal flats, more articulated auto racks than I care to admit, and I figured I was in good shape.  I built the left and top wall parts of the plan, and got started on the curve around into the intermodal area.  Things went considerably faster with flextrack and ready to run turnouts.

Two thing went wrong.  First, although it seems like there is enough track to handle everything, once I started actually moving cars around I started to realize that while there was enough track for everything to be on without over crowding at any given point in time, there wasn't necessarily a way to move a cut from point A to point B without either pulling long cars through the tightest curve on the railroad (36" radius going to the glass plant), or breaking the cut in half and doubling it through the crossover between the runaround and the through track.  My long yard tracks which had seemed so nice and spacious on the plan were turnout out to have moved the throat so far around that I didn't have enough lead!  Changes were called for.

The second thing that went wrong is the B40-8s themselves.  My first Atlas O engine was an SW-8 which runs like a dream.  (I don't really count the little plymouth diesel in the above photo - an ancient Atlas unit I picked up at a white elephant table.)  Very smooth starts and stops, good smooth slow speed running.  The B40-8s on the other hand simply would not sustain any speed between 0 and 3 or 4 smph with a standard decoder - you had to either be starting or stopping.  Once you got past the initial jerk into motion they ran pretty smoothly.  But since my whole operation is switching, starting and stopping is very important.  I could not make them run what I considered to be acceptably smoothly while starting and stopping slowly.  I got reasonably close with two zimo MX69S back-emf decoders, one for each of the two motors in each unit.  There were still subtle but irritating jerky motions though.  I bought an SD40 when they came out and were reported to have fixed the running problems of the B40-8s, however I found it still suffered from the same fundamental problems.

The Corning Industrial was now teetering on brink of survival, and the thing that pushed it over the edge was the arrival of the Atlas MP15 - a new switcher which had all of the same operational qualities as the original SW8 in a more modern and highly detailed package.  The Corning Industrial got a major mission change - sparser, fewer cars to be handled per op session, and it would be considered to be the end of an industrial branch.

The Corning Industrial last gasp

I did some mockups, pulled up a couple tracks, and played around with the idea for a while.  But in the end I came to the conclusion that a large part of my problem all along had been over reaching - planning something larger than I could reasonably build and maintain, and cram too much operation onto it.  Drastic measures seemed to be in order. I decided to keep just the left and bottom sides of the plan, and rip out everything else.  Well, except for the peninsula which I decided to leave in place in case I ended up wanting to put some staging on it.  It wasn't until later that I got the idea of building an N scale layout on it.

The No-Name Industrial Park

The power tools came out, large chunks of benchwork were removed, lots of homabed glued into nicely easemented curves around the top left corner was chiseled off and construction got under way on what I hope is the final reconfiguration.  I also had a lot of rolling stock and a few engines to unload, which turns out to be a lot harder than you would think.  I've got a lot of stuff on consignment at a hobby shop, I donated some stuff to a local club, and I gave some stuff to a couple friends who used it to set up their own modular O scale switching layout. It's apparently relatively easy to sell used HO scale equipment, and N scale equipment is so small you can store a whole railroad's worth in a small drawer.  But with O scale, it was taking LOTS of space in the basement, and let me tell you trying to fit 12 O scale articulated auto rack boxes into the back of a car to take somewhere to sell is NOT easy, and you won't get anything else in that trip.  Just something to think about if you ever find yourself in the mood to buy lots of equipment up for a planned O scale railroad.

I'm pretty happy with the end result.  Operations are interesting even though I don't have the full complement of boxcars necessary for Northeast Container yet (I'm being cautious about buying more than I need, a few at a time until it seems like enough is the plan).  An op session takes somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours, depending on what needs to be done.  The layout feels much less crowded, which is nice too.  The smaller size also makes a little more likely that some day I might actually get some scenery done.

I've come to realize that although I really enjoy operation on some larger layouts with large yards and long mainlines, it's not what I want for my own layout.  I'd like to think I've arrived at a good lasting plan, but of course there is always that cynical little thought that pops out saying "yeah, right".  Time will tell one way or the other.