Another Layout Design

John Olson passed away three or four weeks ago. Other than John Allen, John Olson, along with Malcolm Furlow, had a huge impact on my railroad modeling and how to convey my vision. The first Olson article I read was in the January 1974 issue of Railroad Modeler (now defunct) and it featured his switching layout in HOn3, the bait was set. In 1975 we moved to Colorado and the narrow gauge hook was set; hook, line and sinker.

When I learned of his passing I pulled that old issue out (yes, I still have it and a replacement copy as well) and decided that I was going to finally build this layout and do it in On30. What I found out in later years is that this layout is based on a switching puzzle on a model railroad called the Sagatukett River RR at the end of the line in a small town called Equinox (I found it in a Kalmbach book; "Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader: 58 Track Plans from Past Issues). John built it fairly close but lengthened the tail tracks on the wye to hold an engine and a caboose as well as an extra siding.

I traced the original plan (because I also have a very dog eared copy of that book) and then enlarged it to my favorite scale of 1/8th of an inch equal to 1". I roughed it in and made some notes. Then I pulled out some On30 freight cars, my small Porters (0-4-0 and 0-4-2) and the Mogul (2-6-0). Made some measurements and determined that I could probably build it in about the same amount of space. I'm going to try and stay true to the original so the tail tracks will only hold an engine which will require 12" to handle the Mogul. If I stick to cars that are at least 20' long then that isn't quite long enough to hold a Porter and a freight car at the same time, keeping true to the original design. I'm not sure about the extra spur yet.

That brings the total number of, potential, layouts to 3; Warehouse Row on the D&RGW set in the 60s, the C&N featuring the town of Salina at the turn of the century, and the Equinox layout (likely to be renamed and it will let me give it a nice puny name).

Here it is in all its hand drawn glory. I'll do something a bit more to scale when I replenish my supply of graph paper.

Mount Blue Model Co - On30 22' Boxcar

I have been doing a lot of fanciful doodling with railroad plans roughly based on space, potentially, available in the family room. I found that I was suffering from some fairly serious grandiose designs. So I added a couple of parameters to make things actually fit in the space available. 

It has to be portable, best case I should be able to put it up, take it down and move it on my own. I decided I would use a 36"x 80". This means that my widest curve radius can only be 16" which is pretty darn tight. I know that all my On30 engines can be modified to run this tight a curve, although the 2-8-0s might look a little odd. All my current equipment is either 30' (freight cars) or 40' (passenger cars). I'm not sure how those are going to look on this sharp curve so I went looking for some of the shorter kits out there. Mount Blue Model Co has a nice boxcar kit that's 22' long so I ordered two to build and have them ready when I start to do some tests with the curvature.

I haven't built a freight car kit in years and this laser kit is very different from what I'm use to. It practically falls together and has more detail that those older kits I used to build.

 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 3 - The Market Finished Finally

2025 has not been the greatest year for us. Dealing with the estate of a loved once can be grueling especially one as complicated as my Mom's. I found this particular kit to be a difficult build, the thin plywood didn't leave a lot of surface area for glue and a number of the sub structures were a bit fragile until assembled. I made the two roofs removable, this will definitely be a foreground building and with those large windows will need some serious interior detailing. I finished the inside walls and floors from textures I bought from Clever Models.

I have only lightly weathered the building at this point, more weathering will happen when it actually gets installed on the layout. As with the other buildings the base is only temporary at this point. I have no idea how these will fit into the scene yet so I at least wanted a finished base to protect the model until it gets to the layout.

There were a lot of mistakes made on this build, some of which were pretty basic and I became quite frustrated with it. At least once I considered just junking the whole kit and seeing if I could find another one out there. In addition there were a couple of missing frames which included the corbels from the front ( I have some on order but they haven't arrived yet) and the base for the front porch. I also managed to install some clapboard upside down and fogged windows with the CA. I would like to build it again, but Stoney Creek kits are a bit on the rare side.

Once again, I 'm using my 28mm Prospector from Reaper Miniatures to provide a little sense of scale.

Donor Boiler

I managed to acquire a Bachmann On30 4-6-0 off of eBay last week. As I pulled it from the box I saw all the things wrong with it; missing pilot, broken front coupler, broken and missing hatch on the cab roof and the tender is missing two sets of wheels. The truck is there but the wheels are missing.

Initially I was a bit put out that I hadn't read the description carefully enough beyond it was a good runner. Then it hit me, I don't care if its missing those parts, I just need the boiler! This is the donor locomotive to convert the Bachmann On30 2-8-0 to represent a Colorado & Northwestern 2-8-0 which means I don't care about the broken details. I'm going to strip the boiler down of all its components and fit it to the Bachmann On30 2-8-0, now I just need to find some detail parts, new steam dome, new sand dome and a few other pieces for my first locomotive conversion.

The Colorado & Northwestern in On30

I really enjoyed working on the D&RGW switching plan (Warehouse Row) in 3D. Since I "completed" that model I have been contemplating doing it again. When I decided to do the Malinowski tribute kit builds I thought it would be an opportunity to do it again this time for the On30 layout. 

While I would love to have a layout the does the Colorado & Northwestern justice I don't have the space and I don't want a second switching layout. I envisioned a figure 8 layout with a few places to switch cars but the emphasis on scenery, good sight lines for photography and letting the trains just roll.

There are a couple of parameters. It has to be less than 4' wide and breakdown in to at least two sections so it can be moved and stored easily. Being able to make it come apart definitely adds complications to the build but I'm not going to worry about that for the model. Scenery needs to be lightweight and relatively tough so the bulk of it is going to be carved out of pink/blue. The C&N, like many Colorado railroads, ran along stream banks so a stream, and the opportunity to build a few bridges, are required features.

Looking at a few maps and a lot of pictures I decided that the little mining town of Salina would fit the bill (other than the figure 8) for the location. The station is a bit separated from the town itself and the town kind of straggles up the gulch with at least one of the mines, the Black Cloud, dominating the gulch and the town. Plus the switching is more extensive than a lot of other spots on the C&N and practically everything is on a curve.

 With that in mind I started doodling around with the compass and curve radii. I settled on 20" radius which, in theory, should accomodate the 2-8-0s that I finally managed to acquire. However, the problem with the radius is it really shortens up the passing siding to the point of making it almost useless if I limit myself to an 8' length. To combat that I stretched from 8' to 10'. The compromise is to break the layout down into three pieces, instead of the 2 pieces I was hoping for; 1 6' long and 2 2' long. For the width I needed 40" to accomodate th radius plus a couple of inches on either side which brings us to 44" wide. I'm not sure that only saving 4" from the less than 4' requirement is actually worth it and maybe in the end I'll just go all the way out to 4'.

I went through 5 or 6 iterations before I arrived at one that, mostly, fit the bill. Here are a few pictures to illustrate.

The "final" iteration of the track plan

I photocopied it so I wouldn't mess up the original when I glued it down to a sheet of PVC.

I used some contact cement to glue the paper down to the PVC and cut the whole thing out. This actually didn't work out very well. The paper started to peal away from the PVC pretty quickly as I started to cut it out. The happy accident was that the contact cement actually transferred the track plan right to the PVC so when the paper pealed away the drawing was still on the PVC.

I then cut a piece of Gatorboard to serve as the "tabletop". Its 1/4" thick so I'll have to add some more foam, of some kind, so I can really carve down below the track level.

I glued down the areas that would be elevation 0" that establishes my baseline level.

I then added some risers for the grades. The issue is I need to go from 0" to 5" in about 8' so the grades are steep. However, the C&N averaged about a 4% grade and in the area of Salina there was a section that was close to 7% (not for a long stretch but its still quite the obstacle).

A look from the side.

A closer look at the bridge crossing and the spot where I "cut in" another switch. Originally the train was to enter from the right side, but that created an awkward spot with the grades. By cutting in the switch on the 0" elevation I got around the grade issue on the right.

Now I just need to find some foam to cut up to make create a bit of scenery.

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 1 - The Gunshop

I have been missing in action for the better part of the month, not intentionally but sometimes the days just fly by. I have been slowly working through a couple of projects so things have been happening but life just got in the way of actually blogging about anything. I couldn't even keep up with Cartoon Wednesday! On the plus side the garden is in and we didn't have a hail storm right after we finished like last year. It did take a lot of time though.

So recently I discovered that Roger Malinowski had passed away from cancer all the way back in November of 2022. I only found out when I visited the website for Stoney Creek Designs to see if there was anything new. I have been slowly accumulating his kits for years and have about a dozen in the cupboard waiting to be built and my intent has always been to build them not collect and resell them. There are still 3 or 4 that I would like to acquire but the prices have gone through the roof if they come up for sale at all.

That leads into my decade + fascination with On30 and the search for the Bachmann 2-8-0. Recently I have managed to acquire not 1 but 2 of these engines and have been scribbling designs for a small (ish) On30 layout to run them on. This would not replace the D&RGW HO layout (which is set in the late '50s) but would share the same basic space so it has to be something I can take down and store away when I need to scratch the HO scale itch. At this point this layout will, primarily, showcase the Stoney Creek Design kits so I anticipate operations being somewhat limited with a focus more on scenes and photography those scenes.

I figured I could, at least, go ahead and start putting together the kits on hand so I opted to start with one of the "easier" kits; The Gunstore from the Crossroads Collection. This series of four kits were not limited editions like his regular line of limited edition kits and his intent was to keep them in stock. I didn't really take a lot of pictures of this build so I'm just presenting everything that I have in somewhat the correct order.

I used Clever Creek Model texture files for the floor and walls on the inside.

The basic building finished and the roofs being test fitted.

Shingles!

Tar paper on the back addition

The finished building sections. The white door is the interior door from Grande Line (now owned by San Juan)

A look inside. Since all the models will be up very much in the foreground I want to be able to detail the interior. That required modifying both roofs to be removable. I also plan on adding lighting.

From the front. The miniature is a prospector figure from Reaper Miniatures. Despite being a 28mm Heroic sized miniature he is still on the short side maybe 5’4” or 5”

The base is a piece of gatorboard. It’s about 1/2” wide all around the building and only has some basic scenery completed. The front porch is scratch built from coffee stir sticks.

Acquisition - Finally!

I have been trying to lay my hands on a Bachmann On30 2-8-0, at a reasonable price, for years. Well, it finally happened and I managed to lay my hands on one. Granted it was not in the original box so all the little extra pieces were missing and it had a load of lumber in the tender instead of coal. I can live with all of that. What I might have trouble with is that it appears to be a DCC locomotive which I was not prepared for. Now I'm going to have to do the work and convert my smaller locomotives (a 2 truck Shay and a couple of Porters) over to DCC. Nothing like a challenge!

On30 Portable (sort of) Layout

I have way to many hobbies and, obviously, I tend to jump back and forth a lot. While my main railroad focus is on the HO Scale Warehouse Row (D&RGW) switching layout. That moves slowly because the space where it will live is not ready, so I do a lot of research and planning. But I also have been contemplating an On30 layout and if you look back through the blog you will see a lot of reference to the On30 C&N railroad out of Boulder.

Original concepts have been for a switching layout based on the Sunset station area where the line from Boulder split, one to Ward and the other to Eldora. I have messed around with this a lot and I just can't quite solve how to work around the wye which is the major component of the area. Then the thought occurred to me that maybe I really needed to go in a different direction with this one, especially as the HO layout is a switching layout, do I really need two? The answer is yes, I need two layouts and no I don't need two switching layouts.

With that in mind I was thinking of something I could put up and take down without to much of an issue. 4x8 seemed a little small though even though, in theory, everything I own can handle 18" radius curves. The issue is more that everything else in O scale is just going to take more space. So I opted to stretch it to the space I could set it up in and it will be 4x10. 

This is very much a round the loop layout so there will be a lot more of just trains running than switching. So think of this one more as a display layout that I can just play with. 

Operationally it will work just fine but with the mining theme there won't be any intensive switching like there will be on Warehouse Row.

Layout design is not my forte by any means, so I went looking for designs that caught my eye. This design is mostly a stretched version of a design by Dave Meek (Thunder Mesa Studios) he called the Rio Lobo and Western Railroad (in HO Scale). It features four good sized bridges reminiscent of John Allen's original Gorre & Daphetid RR. and room for a little action moving cars around and, hopefully, room for plenty of scenery and buildings.

The turnouts are the Peco On30 ones. I took the template I downloaded from the Peco site and then reduced it down to the scale of my drawing. Hopefully I did that right. Its still pretty much a work in progress design wise. My intent is for it to break down into four sections for storage and lot of the elements will need to be removable because of that which will certainly increase the construction difficulty level, especially making sure that the track aligns properly between the sections.

Another Round of Boxcars - Weathering (and finished)

This wraps up my RGS boxcar. My weathering process is never quite the same twice and this particular car gave me difficulties. At one point I decided that I had over weathered it and it was looking decidedly splotchy. Once I was back at my workbench I wiped it down and started over, more or less. Since I used alcohol the initial coat of soot was pretty well fastened down. I tried to keep it a bit lighter the next go around. I'm happier with the outcome but it could be better, but its time to set it aside for now, I might come back to it later but its "good enough" for now.

I'm looking forward to a new product coming out from Fast Tracks for freight car storage and transport. These green Bachmann boxes take a lot of room. Fast Tracks is introducing something they call Freightcrates. They are currently available in HO and N so hopefully they will have On3/30 versions out soon!

Fast Tracks

And now a little photo lineup.

Made quick work of the trucks

Clan slate

Soot down the car side, got a little heavy

Soot on the roof, not quite enough but maybe its always farther back on the train.

Adding some dirt

Adding way to much dirt

These are better, not perfect but better.