Model Railroad Blog

Design Tips From the Pros

(Note: For those who don’t get my monthly newsletter, what follows is a copy of the March issue.)

The local out of Hiaeah Yard works Sentry Chlorine in Miami’s East Rail Industrial Park in this 2010 shot.  All of the switches in the park face the same direction so that each industry can be worked using push/pull moves without the need for a runaround.

The best guidance for designing a model railroad can be as simple as copying what the pros do, or at least relying heavily on them for guidance.  “Pros” being defined as the actual rairloads.  Going hat in hand with this is how the prototype typically approaches things from an operations standpoint.  The two are linked.  Over decades, they’ve become clear on the most effective way to do things, and their “track plans” are designed accordingly.

If you compare the design approach of model railroaders versus that of the prototype, you’ll see a vast difference.  Model railroaders often employ multiple runarounds, numerous switchbacks, turnouts facing every which way, as many switches as possible, and highly compressed scenes.  They also lean towards artificially inserted operational gimmicks, complexity, and gotcha’s.

The pros?  The total opposite.  Any railroad design team that employed a “model railroad” approach would likely be fired in short order!  The goal of the pros is maximum efficiency, not entertainment and artificially created operational problems.

“Professional” Design Criteria

Let’s take a look at how prototype designers (typically) do things.  As an example, we’ll use an industrial park fairly close to the yard, say a mile or so.  A professionally designed arrangement (i.e prototype) is generally typified by:

-All turnouts face in the same direction.
-No runaround in the park or en route (the run around is done in the yard).
-No switchbacks.
-A minimum number of turnouts.

Here’s a diagram of CSX’s East Rail industrial park.  It would be worked when the local is heading northward (running from bottom to top of page on the diagram).  The train backs into the park and switches the industries using push/pull moves.  There is no runaround in the park, per se.  There is one outlier in terms of turnouts.  Weeks Gas faces the other direction.  The solution?  Just work it on a different day when the train is heading in the opposite direction.

Here’s a track plan that leans heavily on the “pros” way of designing things.

An operating session would likely unfold as follows:

-The crew builds their own train.  They begin by pulling cars from the yard and building the train on the siding.  All cars are blocked in the correct order in the yard before leaving.
-Once the train is assembled, the loco. runs around the train.
-It then pushes the train towards the industrial park.
-If there are no gates at the grade crossings, they likely slow or come to a complete stop.
-Once in the industrial park, they then use a series of push/pull moves to set the cars out.
-The large industry takes a variety of cars that need to be placed at designated locations or “spots”.  If not all of the cars have finished unloading, they need to be temporarily pulled and then re-spotted.
-A “sorting” track is provided at the end of the line to help with keeping the cars in order as the crew works
-When complete, the empties are pulled back to the yard.

New York – New Jersey Rail in Brooklyn provides an example of track arrangements near the yard on a smallish shortline.  Note the open-air engine service and offices on the right. On the left is a team track with some centerbeams on it.  Note the recently unloaded lumber stacks waiting for pickup.

If you’re in the mood for a shorter session, you could do some relaxed blocking in the yard, take some cars to the interchange track, or work the team track.

Bottom line, if you’re struggling with a design an easy out is to simply copy a prototype track arrangement and operations format.

Unpacking A Scene

I recently picked up the above Kodachrome image on eBay and had it digitized. Not much information was given other than it’s “somewhere in LA”. It wasn’t dated. A post on the SoCal forum seemed to place the vicinity near the LA River, where everything comes together. The first thing that stood out to me, and the reason I bought it, was that it’s what you’d expect to see when you’re out in the field. This is what the rail environment looks like. In no particular order there a few things to take note of:

-Notice the absolutely dead flat sheen on everything.

-Note the subdued color tones, the lack of saturation.

-In the early decades of our modeling career, we tend to work in monotones and singular textures. To advance, we need to become more nuanced and work with numerous color layers and textures. The lot in the center would NOT be easy to model. I’d probably start with a grout mix as the base and then overlay a slightly darker tone for the tire tracks. But…only after spending a few hours dialing things in on samples.

-Note the darker and larger-grained gravel piles. I’d handle those with Arizona Rock and Mineral ballast. I believe they sell sample packs.

-Note the multi-tone, weathered 55 gallon drums. They’d be a project in their own right.

-Note the joint bars. They aren’t a single color. I’d start with Model Master “Dark Earth” and then overlay Bragdon “Weathered Brown” powder.

-For the foreground weeds I’d start with 4mm Woodland Scenics but give it a soaking first in India ink.

The beauty of a scene like this is that A) it would be very inexpensive to model, B) it would be very challenging to pull off, and C) if you did pull it off, you’d have advanced your skills and created an understated but great scene.

(Sidebar. Atlas makes that Alco S4)

2/22/26 Update

It’s been another successful week or two in my effort to slow myself down, get out of mission mode, and enjoy the ride.

On one of the SoCal forums, a retired rail mentioned that one of the industries on the LAJ typically took only UP boxcars. I thought modeling that would make for an interesting look. For the past month or so, I’ve been detailing and weathering three Walthers “Proto 2000” 50-foot UP boxcars. These are very nice models that can be purchased for virtually nothing on eBay.

I finished modeling the street in front of the track and installed it. I consider streets and grade crossings to be “structures” and difficult ones to model at that.

I’ve been puttering with the foreground structure mockup and upgraded it with a version with better photo laminates. The question becomes, do I settle for photos from Streetview or wait until I can fly to LA and get better images?

I did a solo session on the module, swapping loads for empties. Relaxing, fun, and ran for about twenty-five minutes.

Switching Ops Lessons From A Pro

Recently, blog reader John Moenius recommended Railroad Man by LA-based Santa Fe switchman, Richard Paseman. Meant to be a series of entertaining short stories about life on the rails, the book goes into a level of detail about switching operations that I’ve never come across before. Employing these practices stretches the length of an op. session in a plausible way. It also makes your sessions more interesting because you understand the backstory of why things were done a certain way.

Here are some samples from the five page chapter on “The Patch”, a switching district several blocks north of the LAJ.

“The other helper and I went out the back door of the locker room to where the galloper (aka the switcher) sat idling on Passenger 7. We rattled to the bottom of the yard. A few passes in and out of Track 6 and we had our spot cars lined up.”

Railroaders name everything. Passenger 7 and Passenger 6 are yard tracks in Santa Fe’s First Street Yard. He’s explaining that a) the yard job put its own train together and b) they put the train in car-spot-order before leaving the yard. They don’t sort out a mess of cars out on the road.

“We left our spot cars on Jesse Street and went light into The Patch. On the left was a trucking warehouse. They always needed a switch. I walked with the foreman as he compared his list with the empty cars on spot.”

Jesse Street is pretty easy to find on a map.

“The grocery warehouse was our big switch. There was the towering “old house” and several tracks over the one-story “new house.” We left the galloper in the shade and walked inside. The dock foreman was in his office, marking the list of cars to pull and the doors where he wanted inbound cars spotted. We got some soda from a vending machine and stood around shooting the breeze. Gotta give ’em time to break down, meaning the workers had to finish loading and unloading freight and remove the ramps between the building and boxcars.”

There’s a lot to unpack in those few sentences. First off, note the slow pace of their “op. session” as they wait for the customer to carry out their steps in the process. Note the interaction between the customer and the rail crew. Note that the customer dictated where he wanted the cars spotted.

“At the doors alongside the warehouse, a few of the cars were only partly unloaded. We called them baby loads” and gave a sign with our hands like rocking a baby to let our engineer know to go slow and be gentle on the throttle. A loaded car was indicated by moving your hand from mid-chest to waist level, suggesting a “fully loaded belly.” For an empty car, you crossed arms to make an “X.”

Reading between the lines, he’s saying that cars that weren’t completely unloaded needed to be pulled and re-spotted.

Here’s a quick sketch showing where some of the key locations are.

Breaking News From Miami

Some shocking, but great news out of Miami. Yesterday, Tolga Erbora informed me that track for a new industry is being laid a few hundred yards north of where The Downtown Spur splits from the main. For decades, there was a trash recycling business across the main from Hialeah Market Station. At one time there was a single track spur serving it but the rusted rails have been sinking into the weeds as long as I’ve been following the line. Apparently, the old track was removed and three new ones installed.

Here’s the location of the new industry. My understanding is that it will be some form of trash recycling concern.

This was what the location had looked like since I started following things in 2006. You’re looking north. In the foreground is the platform for Hialeah Market Station.