Momentum is building with the Brooklyn Terminal layout. When it comes to layout planning I find that there are limits as to how far you can take scene composition with a two dimensional sheet of paper. Although I start with sketch something out in CAD, I go in knowing that the final rendition will need to be planned with 3D mock ups.
Overall, the front spare bedroom of my home (sort of a sun room) will serve as a layout gallery of sorts housing both the now completed LAJ against the wall, and the new Brooklyn Terminal in the center of the room. In it’s final form, the BT will be supported on flat black pedestals and the shelving you see in the photo will be removed.
Testing over the weekend with the Kato Unitram street track and the new Model Power 2-6-0, although slightly glitchy, was very promising. Both are excellent products.
Power has been fed to the rails giving me an operational mock up. I’ll run thing for awhile, likely making some slight changes to the overall track plan after seeing how operations play out in real time.
Despite its relatively small size, planning the Brooklyn layout has taken a fair amount of time. I’ve been balancing the often competing goals of capturing the sense of the area while at the same time keeping the overall scope from getting out of control. Urban modeling takes a lot of time to pull together because you can’t just lay down some static grass, plop down a few trees and be done with it. Structures need to be built. Streets, lots, and sidewalks need to be laid down, all more time consuming than natural features. “Time”, in all of its iterations, has become a big part of planning my personal designs. How long do I want it to take to get at least up and running? How long do I want a session to last? Do I really want to bite this much off? For the Brooklyn project my key planning objectives were:
Capture the flavor of the New York Harbor’s Brooklyn Terminal railroads in the WWII era.
Have at least an ” operational mock up” up and running in a few months.
Have the capacity to sustain at least a 45 minute operating session.
No scratch building with this layout.
I plan a layout for myself using a combination of site visits, studying photos (aerial and street level), studying maps, reading whatever literature others have put together in print and online, and full scale mock ups. Particularly for small layouts, laying things out 1:1 becomes especially helpful in terms of scene composition and visualizing how things will look once the actual model gets built.
The plan above measures out to 5’6″ by 6′ and is a “free standing island” format located in the same spare bedroom as the LAJ railroad. For those familiar with the area, it draws its primary inspiration from the Bush Terminal but I “stole” the yard and float configuration from the Fulton Terminal, especially the yard located on a pier. Street track will be modified Kato Unitram. I’ll probably slap down some sectional track in the rest of areas to get me running quickly and will decide on permanent track later.
Structures will be primarily Walthers and DPM as they are close matches for what is typical for the area. Realism will be driven by scene composition and carefully thought out color selection of the structures.
For small layouts, I really heavily on full size mock ups to make key planning decisions. Here I’m checking layout height and shelf width. To compensate for the smaller size of N scale, the layout will be set at a relatively high 57″. After laying out the street, structure, and pier widths, a shelf width of 20″ was established. The LAJ layout is in the same room just out of sight to the left.
In looking at the mock up photo above, I can’t emphasize enough how much thought goes into carefully considering the scope. With the mock up in place, I spend a lot of time studying it, coffee cup in hand, thinking through the construction steps, and asking myself, “Do I really want to bite this much off”. I’m continually looking for ways to reduce scope, not increase it. For example, most actual car floats are three tracks wide and longer than the Sylvan model. I decided to go with the smaller Sylvan model because it was one of many ways to trim back the scope.
One of the advantages of selecting the Bush Terminal as a theme is that most of the signature features have escaped gentrification and are still there.
With the plan complete, the next step will be the bench work. I’ll keep everybody posted!
The use of color and quick parts swap outs were used to enhance this Micro Trains N scale box.
Work on the Brooklyn N scale layout begins with a step back to refresh my N scale skills and get back up to speed. High on the list is improving the appearance of rolling stock without making each project a months long effort. Challenges with N scale rolling stock include: excess height to accommodate truck mounted couplers, oversize couplers, cast on ladders and grabs, overly thick rivets and piping, and overly thick parts in general. Essentially we have two weapons at our disposal, the use of color to downplay deficiencies and actually replacing parts. Carving off ladders and grabs and replacing them is DOA in my decision department. Not gonna happen.
Taking a look at the state of the scale, Micro Trains appears to still be the leader of the pack in terms of fine weld seams and rivet heads. For now it seems the fastest approach to get something photo worthy is:
-Stick with Micro Trains for most pieces
-Use black washes around the ladders and brake staff to downplay the fact that they are cast on
-Replace the brake wheel with the excellent Gold Medal Models etching (a quick ten second fix)
-Replace the trucks with the exceptionally well thought out BLMA parts which effectively lower the car back to the correct car height.
-Replace the couplers with body mount Z scale ones. Trim the trip pin off and paint them a dirty brown rust color. I had high hopes for the new scale couplers but, alas the coupler pocket is so large it impinges truck swivel.
