St Paul Pass II - Level 0

Here is Level 0 - it depicts basically the broad St Joe River valley between Plummer Junction and St.Joe.

We start where we left Level 0, at (1). Here the track becomes visible and Code 55.

At (2) we reach the east switch of Plummer Junction yard. In reality, there was a small yard there.

At (3) is the focus of the action - it's where the Spokane line rejoins and the Union Pacific Wallace branch diverges. The turnout arrangement is nearly that of the 1970ies.

Plummer Junction is (was) a switching puzzle as follows: First the Metaline Falls job arrives via the Spokane line and backs it's train into Plummer yard and then splits it up between east- and westbound cars. Second, the UP turn from Wallace arrives and leaves the cars to be interchanged for the locos from the Metaline Falls job on the Spokane line.
Third, the St Maries-Plummer local arrives with cars bound for Spokane and Metaline Falls, which are taken over by the engines of the Metaline Falls Job.
Fourth, the Metaline Falls Job leaves.
Fifth, the UP turn to Wallace arrives and gets cars from the Plummer turn and leaves.
Sixth, road trains take & set out Spokane cars.
Seven, the Plummer-St Maries turn leaves for St Maries.

Operators demanded switching puzzles - here it is!

(4) is Pedee siding
(5) is Lake Benewah trestle - almost as long as it is in reality. It is such a beauty that I have to include it!
(6) is Silvertip Landing - at last a real destination for the log cars! It was here where logs were dumped into Lake Benewah.
(7) is St Maries.It had a lot of local industries (found them in an old shippers guide, but also in TMR. (The Milwaukee Roader - the magazine of the MRHA) So again, this will keep any yardmaster busy. This will be the homebase of the big hook (crane) and a small car repair shop.
Leaving St Maries brings us to (8), the wye of the Clarkia branch, today abandoned but very much alive here. One shortcoming is that it is on the wrong side of the track and the curve on the branch is very small. So this will be 4-axle engines and short cars country - which is correct anyway.
(9) is where the Regulus mill spur diverges (also on the wrong side of the tracks, but I digress) and a combination truss & girder bridge is located.
(10) is Omega siding
(11) is St Joe siding

and (12) is what I intended to never use again - a helix. The truth is - I cannot do without.
I will be using 60 cm (approx. 2ft) radius at a minimum and keep the grade at 1.4% plus it will be accessible easily.
 It's location forces me to use longer tunnels that were not really there, but cometimes you gotta compromise...
There are no spurs or industries on this level except in St Maries whose yardmaster has a corner all for himself.

St Paul Pass II - Level -1

The fun starts here - the lowest level will be at a height of 70cm (or slightly more than 2 ft). That's pretty low, but it's a storage level only. I hope I can use one rolling armchair at this height.

(1) is West Staging yard, complete with 18 tracks - just the same that it is now, except that it will get a second ladder. Today, it is one-ended only and that has proven to be a major headache. It costs precious time to rearrange the trains and it is not good for the locos to be handled every time.

(2) is a new storage yard for unit trains and unused cars, I hope that I can re-use Peco track from the old layout.

Between (1) and (3) is a long but straight ramp up to Level 0, which it reaches at (5), at which point the tracks will be 20 cm higher than before.

At (3) are the west switches of Plummer Junction, still hidden.

At (4) the Spokane-Marengo line splits from No.3 track and finds it's way to Level 0 separated from Plummer yard. This represents, as the name implies, the passenger line via Spokane and will only be used by passenger trains and the Metaline Falls Job and the Union Pacific's Wallace trains. All this - and the 2 yard tracks just visible near (5) will make Plummer Junction an interesting spot on the layout.

At (5) we've reached 90cm (approx. 3ft)  from the ground and the visible part of the layout.

I've changed a lot of my premisses of St Paul Pass I (StPP I):
First, the long hidden track I was to avoid at all cost on StPP I - I might be hiding a WebCam in there to help the engineers. What I've learned is: it is only important that hidden track is easily reachable, it's length is not important. I could have used a helix here but that would have gained me nothing.

Second, the orientation of the tracks: East is always to the right when facing the layout. There is no running against the direction and seeing the same scene twice, but from different directions.

Sprachenen>de GoogleDicKE

direction, quarter

What lies ahead

After talking with a nice guy from Wiengas, who assured me that the  replacement of the gas line that's going through the layout room will not be replaced within the next 2 years, but certainly thereafter, I decided to give it a go.

So, the last session on the St Paul Pass I will be held on June 18th. After that, there might be a limited video session to document the old layout, but after that it will be history.

The new layout will be having the following features (which will hopefully increase our fun):

Atlas Code 55 turnouts

Atlas Code 55 track on mainline

Handlaid Code 40 with wooden ties on selected sidings

Switching puzzles will be conveniently located near the edge of the layout. Most levels will not be deeper than 50 cm.

Cork roadbed, 3 mm high.

Intermediate blocks cut halfway

1.6mm diam. Bus wires

18mm Plywood as subroadbed, fastened to the wall by shelf brackets.

9mm Plywood as subroadbes in every helix.

I got my main ideas from Tony Koesters book"Designing and Building Multi-Deck Model Railroads", published by Kalmbach, ISBN 978-0-89024-741-9

After the Video session the layout will be dismantled and the rolling stock stored.

The dismantling procedure is scheduled to take 4 months at least. It will include several changes to the electrical outfit and the rebuilding of a blocked doorway.

About at the end of 2011 we will be able to start the new benchwork and lay the first tracks. A first test session with a few selected guests is scheduled for June, 2012.

Stay tuned!

A first glimpse

as to what might be coming.
My first tries with 3dPlanIt, the lower level of the new St Paul Pass line. On top is Avery. To the right is east, to the left is west.
Ethelton, Pocono and Calder are already where they should be.
This is a preliminary version, subject to many changes....
View the first try

The session of May 7th

..was rather uneventful. We managed to get 8 people together, which is about 4 short of what is necessary to have a dense, highly challenging timetable. And I admit, I have given up on making exact plans as to when a train is expected to run as with 8 operators you simply cannot stick to the plan. Especially if 2 come later and 2 leave early. Not to mention the no-shows.
Since the making of the plans was a rather time-consuming affair I've given up on that for now.

But that is only one side. The other side is that for those of us who are coming because they like switching are disappointed because without planning there is no reliable switching in Avery possible.
And then there are those who disobey the track warrants and continuously run red signals and into open switches.
As a matter of fact, that annoys me really. It’s like building a highway for everyone to use and nobody uses it. The red light on a signal is there because you must stop your train. Period. I cannot understand why this is so difficult to understand.
And it has bad consequences, too – the layout shuts down and after a dozen shutdowns everybody becomes annoyed, not to mention that the signaling system goes down and loses track of the signal aspects. Which means that they show false greens (results in another shutdown) or false reds (which taxes the dispatcher who has to talk everybody by the red signals).
Many problems could be solved by using the mind. After all, that’s what it’s created for. But I admit that the design flaws the layout has don’t help a bit. (See the other post of today!)
So let’s face the future…

Have I gone crazy?

Well, you might call me that. Honestly. But read on.

As the few operators that stayed until the end of our session of May 7^th already know the St Paul Pass line will be rebuilt from the ground up. The thought occurred to me when I was thinking about the long planned extension into what was a separate room long ago. No matter how I planned the location and elevation of the tracks – it was not going to work in any way. Either I would have to move both staging yards again and make them less accessible or move the dispatcher’s desk or both.

And then, after more than 50 sessions, all the design flaws have been showing their ugly faces:

• The staging yards themselves are a headache with them being connected only on one side.

• No consistent direction. On every part of the layout there are at least 3 levels mixed. What had looked like a good idea 20 years ago did not work out as expected. The engineers are to be expected to know where they are going and what the next station will be, yet they are often confused by trains on the next level, which are coming against them but in reality go in the same direction. The other way around is much more serious as the engineer has no way of knowing that the train going in the same direction is actually coming against him.

• St Paul Pass and its vicinity are in reality nothing like the Colorado Rockies. It’s more rolling hills with few rock faces covered by trees. Due to the different levels all integrated into the same scenery the small horizontal distance between the tracks leads to a huge vertical distance, which in turn leads to large rock faces everywhere. That not only looks out of place – it is.

• To steep grades for the trainlength
  I followed John Armstrong who said: “Model locomotives haul more than they should on grades, so grades should be somewhat exaggerated.” Obviously, he thought of 10-12 car H0 trains and not of more than 30 cars in a train in N scale. And for sure he did not mean to apply this rule to helices. It is more than challenging for the operators to get over the 3%/45cm radius helix on the upper level. We have had far too many derailments and other problems there. None of us is slim enough anymore to get in there which results in damaged cars and locos whenever we have to rescue a stranded train.

• Accessability
  When I had been installing the signals, I cursed myself for having to crawl under the layout and soldering over head or in barely reachable spots. I swore I’ll never get under the layout again. But as I’m getting older (and wider) how long will I be able to crawl down there? So this would have been needed to get solved anyway.

• 2 of the 3 big industries currently operated are not within easy reach. This results in frustrated operators and damage to the scenery.

• The dispatcher’s desk is too big, resulting in the occupation of valuable space. If it was smaller and more isolated it would be much better.

• I did not use cork as a subroadbed, but leftover foam which is used as a base for flooring tiles. It seemed a cheap and perfect solution then, but it is too soft in the long run, resulting in all kinds of problems with the turnouts. Especially those turnouts that are hard to reach.

• I do not like Peco turnouts and track any more. Not because they are bad or poorly designed - beware! - no, but they are not designed for DCC and they do not work well with modern, slim wheel treads and besides that I had to modify every turnout to make them safe for operation. Code 80 looks huge and the ties are too big. 20 years ago, that was all that was available. But now with the fantastic looking Atlas Code 55 track....

And the master argument ("The mother of all arguments") is: At my current age it is hard to do, but I'll manage. In 10 years from now I might feel too old to do it again. So it's now or never.


Everybody is encouraged to challenge this decision. I'm looking forward to intense discussions. No timeframe has been selected yet.

Fun&Work Session April 20th,2011

The week before Easter is usually slower going and with John beeing eager to test the Zimo sound decoder he had built into the Atlantic we decided that it would be time for having some fun again and called a work&fun session - which meant that we tested the Hiawatha with sound first and than did some work.


I got John interested in Milwaukee Road modelling and he bought himself a Hiawatha set from FVM. He got it earlier than me, but I wasn't jealous. (Well, maybe a bit!) He promised to tailor the sounds for the Zimo decoder he prefers due to his contacts to Zimo. And he went a long way to get it as accurate as possible, he bought a few DVDs to get an idea how the Atlantic sounded and he downloaded airhorn sounds from a website to get everything right. He kept his promise and had it ready in time for our session.
And I must say - it was amazing! I could watch the loco for hours going through the yard and around the layout. The photos of that event are on the Flickr photostream!
We will do a video session someday to get a really good impression of this awesome train, which is a real piece of art with it's design and the amazing details. Fox Valley Models did a really good job on that one and I sure hope that it is a commercial success for them, encouraging more projects of this kind. To be honest, it helps that there are just 3 different models in this train: The observation, the cafe and the rest - the coaches are of the same design as is the parlor car.

We had to find out how the Atlantic would perform over the 3% grade up from Adair to East Portal - with 6 cars. This small 4-4-2 managed to get them over the pass without stalling and slipping and it still had reserves. Of course the cars are a bit on the light side so this is not your really heavy freight train in need of 4 locos!


So, yes - it is able to get it's train up the mountain and therefore the next session will see a double-headed excursion train with double sound or two trains meeting somewhere!

Of course, we did some work, too. Wolfgang planted trees and the rest tried to organize the next session by loading cars, placing locos and shuffling cars around with the good old 0-5-0.

And we discussed the oncoming extension for which construction will start this summer.
I hope, everybody had some fun!