Distilling what we want from a project...

I’ve been going around in circles recently trying to scope out my next project, intended to take the logging railroad from sketchpad to reality. Whilst this has felt at times fruitless, it has allowed me to really consider the project in terms of my desired outcomes…

Rather than identify success as a complete layout, or try to squeeze a quart into a pint pot the challenge has been balancing a limited time and space, with the desire to create something. The idea was to take half of ‘Split down the middle’, modelling just the far end of a transfer and small workshop but I found myself worrying about composition, playability and operation. The kind words of a regular reader, Alan, were rattling around in my head (that the shops located at the end of a reload were unlikely) suggesting that I look for prototype inspiration and work back from there…

I’ve been here before, once you’ve a space for the layout find a prototype that will work with that, rather than against it… 

Space for a layout - then a prototype that fits...

At the same time Chris was helping bounce some ideas around…

Did you ever follow Rick deCandido’s Fillmore Terminal blog? He modelled a large engine terminal but, why I mentioned the blog, his blog posts often chronicled movements during typical operating sessions. Thinking of your cameo and how you’ve already considered reducing the logging cameo down to just a shops area this is a vote in that direction. 

Much like on Pont-y-dulais you’d still have a variety of moves of equipment ( engines and cars) into and out of the shops but as the logging company shops in their mid-century time they service more than just trains so the yard could be decorated with company trucks. A siding to a loading ramp could be a great place to stage flat cars used to carry machinery into the woods. In many ways, the same PyD track plan with maybe two tracks into the engine shed instead of your one?

I pictured this idea of a logging workshop working a lot like an American PyD. I love the way you’re able to move PyD through so many identities and I get a strong sense of how much joy it brings you. Creating a mate that is based on American logging might work as a project layout to use under a series of neat American logging locomotives and cars while you contemplate a larger format thing.

I really appreciated this reflection… I was feeling a little lost with the 'Split' scheme and it made me look again at first the track plan, then what I hoped to achieve, however, back to Alan's point...

Sitting in front of the fire one evening with Greg Durr’s collection of photos I stumbled upon an image that had grabbed me the first time I’d seen it but I’d not given it a second thought…

Photo John Shaw, (Durr, 2016)

A large mallet on Raynier's Gray’s Harbour branch system at Railroad Camp leaving a spur, rail too light, curves too tight for the new Baldwin diesels… a few photos on showed a steam locomotive and diesel exchanging trains (loads for empties) elsewhere on the system. A green shoot sprung from the ground, a seed had germinated…

My sketchbook, thinking out operation of this scheme...

Taking the track plan of Pont-y-dulais, just two turnouts, and re-imagining a branch and loop on a logging line's main. A Shay arrives with loads from a lightly laid spur and exchanges these for empties with a brand new yellow FM diesel at the loop...

We run into each other, again, over a layout plan. 

In the link above I’d had this idea, like what you describe, where the on stage action/play is the interplay between three off-stage staging cassettes representing (a, b, c) three origins or destinations for freight cars. I pictured it working for two people and while stored in a shelf operated from two sides, with the operators facing each other, like two people playing a board game or sharing a meal. 

A side / B side sketch by Chris Mears.

When I first drew it I had NCB in mind and a vision of this layout being a junction between colliery (a), unloading wharf (b), and maybe mainline railway interchange (c). Our engines, as the actors, dart into and out of those three off-stage places and either deliver or retrieve cars. You could do the same but further divide movements by shay moves or FM moves?

This was a fantastic confluence of conversation and design. Sketching out my idea helped me realise I wanted to take it one stage further, and closer still to Pont-y-dulais, doing away with the fiddle yard. I’m actually erring to just accepting it for what it is, a stage set… and what I enjoy - somewhere to display and photograph my trains but not really operate. I don’t want to add DCC or sound, it complicates matters…It could stand in as Vancouver Island just as easily as the Pacific North West. 

My sketchpad and final scheme. Illustration by James Hilton. Photos from Logging book (Durr, 2016)

Still a canvas but a tighter focus… a logging focus.

The two things I want to practice are painting a back scene and working with the new techniques of track and ballast I completed recently…

Those are some interesting guiding principles. Too often in the generic advice in the hobby they ask what the modeller’s goals for the layout are but they are guiding an answer toward track and trains. While in any of these plans, yours ours or theirs, we’re all building a shelf with trains running on it, but what we’re trying to do in that space is as unique as we are. Identifying those priorities early on orders things to a hierarchy from which most of the other decisions cascade almost elegantly.

I think accepting the constraints and identifying the opportunities is important and that our friends offer great support as sounding boards and collaborators. Alan's thoughts and Chris's support have challenged  me to re-consider this project, and get to the point I am now. Clear on what I’m trying to achieve.

Until next time, more soon...

References:

Durr, G. (2016). Logging railroads of the Pacific Northwest in color. Volume 1, Washington State. Scotch Plains, Nj: Morning Sun Books, Inc.

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