Track Plan I - Levels 1 & 2

See my Givens and Druthers (Part I and Part II) for the space I have available and my goals with this layout design. I found out that there isn't room in a 9-1/2 foot wide space to have a peninsula with a blob on the end with an 18" radius. That leaves an around the room design. I've operated on other layouts that had duck-unders and movable bridges, and I'm not getting any younger, so I don't want any tracks across the door.

That leaves an around the room design going back and forth. To represent almost 50 miles of railroad I need to use multiple levels. I saw a clinic at the Hub City MER/NMRA convention about using narrow shelves for a layout and how this can avoid many of the problems associated with multi-deck layouts. This will require modification at two stations, Barber and Statesville, because the wyes at those locations are important to operations.

It looks like this will have four or five visible levels. The top level, which is above head height,is the west staging yard, representing Oyama Yard in Hickory, NC. I'm calling this Level 0.

West Staging Yard

This 12 track staging yard has 10 stub tracks. Track 1 (nearest the center of the room) loops over the stub tracks on a bridge and connects to Track 12, making a reversing loop. The grades on this are a little steep, about 5-1/4% on the front and about 4-1/2% on the back. This is mainly for turning the passenger train, which is typically two cars long, and the rail-highway (Southern for "Piggyback") train.

The back side of this is now in the train house. Here is a picture of the bridge.

The bridge is a through plate girder with no attempt a being prototypical.

Level 1: Conover and Newton

Level 1 is the top sceniced level and represents the S-Line main track from just east of Oyama to Newton, NC. There was a small piggyback lift between Oyama and Conover. I've compressed it by removing one storage track. This facility had a rail mounted straddle crane over one track. There are two towns along this section, Conover and Newton. The furniture industry was big here, and is represented by Broyhill Furniture and the Southern Chair Company.

This level also has the small yard in Newton where the ex-Carolina and Northwestern (CRN) branch split off from the main line and went to Lincolnton, Gastonia, and York, SC. It now ends at the Midstate four mill on the south side of Newton. The branch is represented by a two track staging yard, which is sufficient since this line had one train in each direction six days a week. There will be additional industry tracks as the layout is constructed.

Level 2: Conover and Catawba

Level 2 comes back around the room the other way and includes the towns of Claremont and Catawba. Neither was much for rail served industries, but Claremont has the longest siding on this stretch of the S-Line at 265 cars. Mine won't be quite that long. Since this is the first siding for eastbound trains leaving Oyama, the crew had better carefully check their timetable and train orders before leaving.

Catawba once had a siding and a wye. The east leg of the wye was removed and the west leg is now the beginning of the lead to Duke Power's Marshall Steam Plant in Terrell, NC. This leads to a two track staging yard. The siding track was moved away from the main track and was used for loading pulpwood.

The part of the layout is also home to two bridges. The biggest is the bridge over the Catawba River. I have a picture of it in another post, and here is another taken from the shore.

This bridge has four Warren Truss spans, each about 135 feet long, and eight deck plate girder spans, each about 60 feet long. The model will reduce this to two truss spans and five or six plate girder spans.

The other bridge is a concrete arch bridge over McLin Creek. Here's a picture that I took of that bridge. Please pardon the anachronistic train on the bridge. This bridge is about 200 feet long.

The road I'm standing on would be behind the bridge as it is oriented on the layout, but I may take a little modeler's license and switch it around to the other side.