Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad along the Missouri River by Cathead - 1/87 (HO) scale - model railroad with steamboat

[Cathead]

5 hours ago, Keith Black said:

once you have the town and foliage in place then decide.

I partly have to decide sooner, since once I've placed trees in front of the backdrop I'm not easily going to be able to remove them again or get behind them to redo the backdrop.

 

1 hour ago, kgstakes said:

With a fall scene it is really hard to make it look convincing with painted trees in the background.

I agree, but I also relish the challenge and the distinctive look! Your photos look awesome.

 

1 hour ago, wefalck said:

It is always a good idea to hide the line between the background painting and the 3D-foreground with some 'props' such as trees, hedgrows, fences etc.

Yes, this is the general plan in most places. The most exposed seam will be where roads go directly into the backdrop and I have yet to decide if I'm going to try and have them blend into the distance or just go blank. The problem with a town scene in which most of the town is just behind the backdrop is that it feels all or nothing; if I paint on a receding road, there needs to be receding buildings, too, and I'm not sure I'm up for getting that right. Something that looks wrong is often worse than something just not being present, since the eye and mind will fill in missing detail but will notice wrong-looking detail.

 

1 hour ago, wefalck said:

Somehow, I have the feeling that the cliffs left and right continue as painting on the background - perhaps you can continue with the same style of painting as on the 3D-feature for a few inches and then let the cliff details become increasingly faded?

That's what I did...the bare bluffs receding on both the left and right sides use the same paint/pastel mix as the foreground plaster rocks. I'm pretty happy with how those transitions turned out; at the very least I don't think I can improve it.

 

Another challenge in such backdrops is that viewers see them from so many different angles that there's no one "right" perspective. Viewed from one angle, a receding bluff line or creek can look great, and viewed from another angle, can be at an awkward angle. Very different from a true "flat" painting in which the perspective more or less stays the same no matter how it's viewed. For better and worse, I've mostly tried to orient the perspective from a trackside view, such that certain things look a bit "off" when viewed from a normal standing angle. 

[Cathead]

Apologies for ghosting this log. Summer has continued to push us hard, with relatively little persona time. I do have two updates to write up, the shorter of which I'll do here, the longer of which I'll need more time for.

 

I've moved forward with a bit more scenery work, mostly laying down base layers in the eastern part of town. Here's the current status:

 

This is trying to replicate the pattern clearly seen in historic photos, of the depot area having a much lighter layer of ground cover (some form of sand/gravel) than the rest of the area. The foreground area will become a rough farm field; much of the area south of the tracks was functionally in the river's floodplain and had small farm plots on it. You can also see that I've filled in the road east of the depot and added a rough version of the stock pens along the spur behind the depot. Here's a photo of this area in the early 1900s.

 

A couple closeups: here are some of the grade crossings, laser-cut wood castings that I weathered.

 

And here's the stockyard part of the spur.

 

Both the road and the spur's ballast are finished with sand from my local stream, sifted to a grain size I want. The stockyard is a cheap plastic modular kit; down the road I'll want to rebuild this from scratch using wood, but I had this sitting around, and adapted it to fill the space for now. At some point I'll use an airbrush to do some weathering on it.

 

This all continues to look like Montana until I get more vegetation on it, but that's down the road yet. But at least I'm slowly moving forward with filling in the blank surfaces with something at least resembling scenery. Thanks for sticking with me on this! Look for a longer post at some point on my first test runs of an operating scheme for this town.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 22 by Cathead

[Cathead]

So it looks like I screwed up that last post. There was supposed to be a historic photo in there, and that last photo wasn't supposed to be there. Please go reread it now so you can actually see the old photo that shows the lighter-colored ground cover around the depot, the small fields across the tracks, and so on.

[Cathead]

OK, this is going to be a long post (or maybe series of posts). It's finally time to talk about what makes this project something other than just a big scenic diorama: active railroad operations. The trick here is to make this interest for the model railroad folks, and intelligible to the non-railroad folks, without boring or overwhelming either population. Here goes.

 

A core idea in model railroading is not just that you're creating a realistic static scene or model, but in addition, setting up a stage on which actual railroad operations can be conducted. In other words, you're not just recreating a look or an object, but recreating a full set of actions and operations that bring the feel of railroading back to life. There are decades of writing, theory, discussion, practice, debate, and experience in this realm and I'm not going to conduct a seminar here. But I do want to try and express how this idea and goal plays out in the design and implementation of this Rocheport module, and by extent to the rest of the planned layout if it expands.

 

First, a reminder that Rocheport was a real place along the 1900-era MK&T. I'm reposting this image from earlier in the log, showing the route of the mainline. Coming from the west, it passes through the line's only tunnel, crosses the Moniteau Creek bridge, runs through town, encounters the depot and grain elevator toward the east end of town, then curves out of town to the east along some major bluffs hard up against the big river. What we're doing is recreating a version of how the MK&T might have operated its trains through and in this town. A reminder that the railroad's primary yard in this region was 10 miles west at Franklin, and a series of smaller towns with minor industries/customers stretched east from here along the river.

And here's a contemporary view from the east side of town, showing the dual-track passing siding in front of the depot, and the single spur track behind the depot that serves all the town's possible freight customers, from the grain elevator to the depot itself to the stockyards to any other customer that might want a carload of something delivered or picked up (such as an apple shipper).

MK&T traffic through town in this era would have consisted of (1) three passengers trains each way (some stopping, others expresses that didn't stop), (2) a certain number of through freights between St. Louis and points west and south (these also wouldn't have stopped), (3) livestock trains hauling local cattle and hogs to slaughterhouses in St. Louis, and (4) a local freight operating out of the yard in Franklin (10 miles west) whose job it is to switch small towns along the line like Rocheport. In a larger layout, I'd be focusing on recreating all this traffic when it really has somewhere to go (and the Franklin yard to interact with). Right now, with just Rocheport, the focus is on the single local freight arriving in town to pick up and drop off cars, then proceed on its way, while staying out of the way of any other passenger trains or through freights that might be scheduled to pass through while it's here.

 

Yeah, that's long enough, this is going to be multiple posts. This one sets the stage, and in the next one I'll try and show what actually operating the town looks like.

[Cathead]

OK, so things have progressed enough that over the last month or so I've run a few test operating sessions in Rocheport. I put a lot of thought into designing the track plan and the operating scheme for this layout, and the early results are that it's paid off as things are really working as I want them to. I could go really deep into the weeds of all sorts of planning details but that's not of primary interest to most of you right now. What I'm going to do here is an illustrated walk-through of a single local freight coming into Rocheport, doing all the switching necessary, and then heading on. This is the basic concept of an operating session, bringing an actual train into town and doing real railroad work in a way that's reasonably similar to how a real railroad would do it. I can't post video so you'll have to make do with the images below, which I took in sequence while Mrs. Cathead and I ran this session together. You'll have to imagine the sound-equipped locomotives as they huff and puff and whistle their way through the work. Also, keep in mind that scenery is nowhere near done and I have a lot of buildings left to complete, so town looks rather emptier than it should.

 

Leading off, an eastbound seven-car local freight arrives through through the tunnel from the yard at Franklin, where its cars were previously dropped off by through freights that don't bother stopping at dinky little towns like Rocheport:

Already in town are five cars waiting to be picked up: an empty gondola that had delivered coal to a local dealer, a boxcar loaded with grain from the elevator, a boxcar  behind the depot that both dropped off and picked up small shipments (the UPS truck of the 1900s), and two stock cars loaded with livestock from local farms and ready to be sent to processors in St. Louis:

Our locomotive starts to break down its train and sort cars for delivery. It's easy to just pick up all the outbound cars and take them back to the yard, but how do we know where each inbound car goes? 

The answer in this scheme is the car card and waybill system, very common in model railroading. What's presented here is a rough version I mocked up for testing purposes; I'll make better ones later when I'm satisfied.

The pink slips are car cards, each of which represents a physical car on the layout. The waybills are little printed slips of paper that slide into a pocket on the car card, with information on where the car originated, what it's carrying, and where it needs to go. Back in Franklin, the yard engine would have switched all these cars onto the same track based on their final destination printed on these cards, and here in Rocheport, other printed lines tell us which cars are destined for Rocheport (vs other towns down the line) and which exact destination they go to.

 

I also drew up a railroad schematic for Rocheport, which shows operators where each track is, what its official name/number is, where different car destinations are, and other relevant geographic features. Using the waybills and this map, you can figure out where any car is or where it needs to go. The numbers in the corners are the actual railroad mileposts. If you go back a few photos, you'll see this hanging on the fascia where it's easy for operators to consult.

There's a little shelf hung from the fascia right in the center of town, where operators can sort and read the car cards and waybills as they do their work. This "desk" is a key featuring in making operations functional. Here you can see how it's laid out. Right now each track just has a cheap label, in front of which the car cards are stacked based on which track the cars are on. Soon those will be converted into little sorting boxes that will better hold the cards separate.

With that explanation out of the way, we'll follow our freight as it switches this surprisingly complex little town. But I'll do that in the next post.

 

 

[Cathead]

OK, let's get to work. Our locomotive is going to start by sorting all the inbound cars into the right order for shoving into this siding. In some cases this pre-sorting might have been done in the yard to make the road crew's life easier, but that didn't seem to happen today, so they're all jumbled up (more busy work in the real world, more fun work for us). Below, we're using the near end of the siding as an extra place to stash a car while we sort things out. 

Keeping an eye on our MK&T timetable, we know we have to clear the main line for an express passenger train soon. So everything gets shoved out of the way while this passes through. One change I made from the real Rocheport is to designate the track nearest the depot as the passing siding, and have the main line be the track away from the depot (on the real thing the main line was in front of the depot). The actual reason for this is complicated and has to do with how best to arrange turnouts in this condensed scene, but there is real-world precedent for having a depot on a passing track. In my case, I can argue it makes sense because only slower locals stop at Rocheport so this lets faster expresses barrel right through on the outside track.

Once all the inbound cars were sorted, we pulled all the outbound cars and started spotting inbound cars. Here the locomotive is shoving two empty stock cars toward the stockyards. Cars 74 and 49 in the foreground are going to a different town than Rocheport, so will just be left out of the way with the caboose until we're done.

And another angle on that move, shoving the stock cars into the siding. 

And the final placement.

With those cars shoved into the far end of the siding, we can place the other three cars at the western end. Here the locomotive is shoving in a boxcar of small freight for the depot, an empty boxcar for the grain elevator, and a flatcar with a new wagon for one of the local implement dealers. You may recall from an earlier post that all the businesses listed on my waybills are real ones found in the railroad's business directory, adding to the sense of realism.

With all the inbound cars spotted, it's time to reassemble our train. Five outbound cars and two more to take to another town before returning west to Franklin. Let's grab that caboose and those two cars and stick them back on the end of our newly pulled five cars.

Tacking the caboose and two final cars onto the rest.

Our train is reassembled, but we can't leave yet, as there's a local passenger train due. We were smart enough to reassemble our train on the main this time, so the local can pull into the passing siding in front of the depot.

Another view of this meet, with the short local at the depot and the longer freight ready to depart eastbound.

Our freight heads east along the river bluffs...

and our passenger local heads west toward Franklin.

And that's what a simple one-town operating session looks like. The intellectual puzzle of sorting and spotting cars is quite fun, and it can be kept fresh time after time by simply altering the waybills for each card. Maybe next time there's a boxcar of apples to ship out instead of a wagon-loaded flatcar arriving. Maybe there aren't any livestock shipments. Maybe a boxcar has to stay at the elevator, meaning we have to move it out of the way, do our work, then put it back. So many iterations even in a small town. 

 

As the layout expands, operations get even more complex. As towns are added, trains have more places to actually go, and more work to do in those places. It gets more practical to run passenger and freight trains through, actually going places instead of just moving back and forth on a glorified diorama. Add in the larger yard at Franklin and suddenly you have a whole separate job dealing with all the long-distance freights as they stop to drop off and pick up local-destination cars. And so on.

 

Long-term the full layout I have planned will keep 4-6 people happily busy for several hours. As it is, Mrs. Cathead and I (or any other friend) can run a fun little operating session in half an hour or so, a quick break from life to travel back in time to 1900, when steam whistles still echoed off the bluffs here.

 

I hope you followed along on all that, and that it gave you a sense of what makes model railroading distinct from many other hobbies. Feel free to ask further questions, whether you're a model railroader with specific curiosity about something esoteric, or someone who wonders something more general about all this.

 

Thanks so much for reading! There's still a lot of scenery and building to do, but this project is now at the actively fun stage.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 01:49 AM by Cathead

[Keith Black]

 That's pretty dang slick, Eric. Thank you for taking the time to explain the operations side of model railroading. 

[Rik Thistle]

Eric,

 

Not being a model railway enthusiast this is all new to me but nonetheless fascinating and a bit complex. I'll re-read these posts to let it properly sink in. 

 

The diagrams and pink cards add a whole new dimension to it all. 

 

The last pic of the train passing through the bridge is quite picturesque.

 

A very interesting build log....keep it coming 😉

 

Richard

 

 

[Cathead]

Keith, thanks and you're welcome!

 

Rik, I think I might draw up a conceptual diagram of the operating session described above, to help people see in map view how things got moved around. Hopefully o over the weekend. It definitely is a very new way of thinking if you're not in this world and I want to at least convey the intellectual challenge and stimulation it creates.

[Canute]

Real good that you can operate your layout and sort out any glitches to your operating scheme. I've operated on several layouts that have some terrain and a few foam block structures. They'll get around to doing structures 'one of these days". And I've been enlisted to build up structures or rolling stock to help owners advance their railroads.