Dockside Layouts
|
|
Tynyport Dock is a "micro-sized"
version of a larger design by Giles Barnabe. Anything lost in the translation is
entirely my fault. The layout, writes Giles, is "very loosely based on a colliery
[coal mine] line in N.E. England, though here converted to narrow gauge. It includes
elements of the "Fish-hook" and Inglenook designs, though the track plan's
flyover loop and various levels disguises them slightly.
"Trains of loaded wagons arrive through the tunnel and run into the tail track
(left centre). From here they are shunted into the holding sidings within the loop
until the tippler is ready. Then short cuts of wagons are taken out, run over the
wagon scale and then propelled round to unload in the bunker which in turn feeds
the ships using the dock. Vollmer and Fleischmann make working tipping sets in N
gauge, and these could be modified to HOe/HOn30/OO9 to make the layout fully operational.
"Trains arriving from the mine exchange wagons at the central storage sidings
and return to the mine [the cassette fiddle yard] with the empty wagons. Dockside
shunters switch the tipple roads."
Giles has concocted a realistic and appealing colliery line, which can also provide
interesting scenic opportunities due to the various levels of train operations. Mnimum
radius is 7 inches.
|
|
|
Terry Allen specializes in small tramway layouts,
with four-wheel trams (trolley or self-propelled cars) for passenger traffic and
small shrouded steam locos (dummies) for goods (freight). Here's a busy example,
the 4'x1' Quayside Tramway in O9 (On18) or perhaps in O16.5 (On30). With a
careful choice of rolling stock, it could even be built in OO or HO standard gauge!
The viewer is standing in the middle of a waterway, with the front of the layout
being decorated as the quay (wharf). Small trams and short trains of goods wagons
appear from the Fiddle Yard (behind the tall quayside warehouse building).
And animated action areas abound! A traverser (transfer table) makes for some interesting
stock movements in the small yard. And a wagon turntable right up front adds extra
interest to the industrial shunting activities. A working Tipper Chute at the left
provides a good destination for open wagons or skips and if made into a working facility
gives still another spot of animation to the layout.
All in all, this quayside is a very busy place, as befits a small but active port
town. If you like to build tiny and unusual rolling stock, including trams, this
is a great layout for showing them off!
|
|
Modeling the Ipswich
Dockside (moved to Canada!)
 Lilliput Quay was designed
by Ian Bareham as a smaller-sized version of his Lilliput Pier and Alderman Quay
layouts (Model Trains International 35). It's a small dockside switching layout
modeling a small yard which can be found at virtually any port in the world. Based
on his firsthand observations of the Ipswich waterfront, Ian designed this layout
as an HO line set in Modern Vancouver. He has also considered setting it in early
diesel era Ipswich ... or even in Chile.
Ian's original design was 36"x18", a bit large for a micro layout but providing
him plenty of room for the kind of waterfront structures and scenery that make a
dockside layout so attractive. I have taken the liberty of squeezing the width a
bit, down to 13", to allow a slightly larger fiddle yard and still be under
four square feet, the size limit for a micro layout. Any losses experienced in this
process are completely my fault.
The layout photo shows a mockup of the trackage that Ian put together to test the
concept. For the modern Canadian version of the layout, he uses small Model Power
Porter Hustler diesel industrial switchers. The two switch leads must hold at least
a Porter and one car, either a CN grain car or a 50-foot box car.
Planned structures include a baker (flour mill) and maltings hiding the entrance
hole from the fiddle yard, a cannery on the dockside, plus an oil depot and grain
elevator on the kickback siding.
Photos below show the kind of waterfront scenery that Ian has in mind. He shot these
on recent visits to the Ipswich waterfront. At the top left is some appealing Quayside
trackage; at the top right is a typical small yard scene of the sort that inspired
this excellent layout design. Bottom left shows the Ipswich wet dock, and bottom
right is the Stoke Bridge entrance, now, alas, demolished.
|
|
|
 
 
|
|
|
Another approach to dockside modeling comes from the
fertile brain of Emrys Hopkins. He envisions a Gn15 track plan made up mainly of
12"x6" tiles, joined to create a long but narrow waterfront shunting layout,
Whatsup Dock. Total area of the layout itself is exactly four square feet.
Total footprint area occupied by the layout, though, is 54"x30". Red divisions
on the drawing are one-foot squares.
Emrys suggests that "this could be a corner layout, with the pier section
being attached only when the layout's being operated -- perhaps folding down out
of the way when not in use.
"The scene is a dockside, with tall, imposing warehouses in varying degrees
of low relief at the back of the layout. Within a large building to the left is the
fiddle area... There's plenty of opportunity for working cameo scenes on a busy dockside
-- winches raising and lowering crates, a worker on his lunchbreak casting a fishing
rod into the dock, and the like."
Operations can be as complex as you wish, depending on how many cars you place on
the layout at one time. Basic operating scheme is to bring a train from the Interchange
point (fiddle yard) that requires shunting its cars into both the Pier and the Warehouse
sidings. Any cars presently in those positions must be collected and returned to
the fiddle yard. Car shunting assignments can be generated by computer or drawn from
a hat. |
|
|
An Effective Display for Your Trains
Designed originally as a Winter playpen for 7/8"-scale
garden trains, Large Scale Pleasures has been redrawn here as a micro layout,
28"x20", with 6" radius curves at 16.5mm gauge. It's a great place
to play with and show off your trains in Gn15, 1n20, On30, HO, or even HOn30 scales!
(It would also work well in 3/4" gauge, representing On3 or 1n2 scales.)
The train-length, three-track traverser (transfer table) hidden away at the rear
can feed a wide variety of trains onto the oval "circuit," and they can
amble through the countryside for a long time without much repetition. There are
some switching spurs for those moments when the shunting mood strikes; and the spurs
are arranged as an Inglenook fan, so switching puzzles can also be run on this versatile
road.
The three-way lap switch is from Peco, and represents a worthwhile investment as
it's the only turnout on the layout! Scenery shown is the original design, which
was created for a gentleman who lives in Maine and naturally models seacoasts and
fish factories. You can easily change it to suit whatever part of whatever country
you wish to model. Making the crane a working model might be an interesting engineering
project for next winter!
This slightly-advanced railway is well within the capability of almost any model
rail to build. It makes very effective use of a few simple layout elements to gain
great operating impact. As a note, the larger-scale version used 10" radii (smallest
practical for 1.75" gauge tracks) and measured 4.4'x3.3'. The operating potential
was about the same.
|
|
Tram to Serve an Island Industry
James Island, an isolated place along the Pacific
coast in British Columbia, Canada was home in 1915-1979 to the Canadian Explosives
Ltd. plant for manufacturing TNT and other military explosives. A narrow-gauge railway
featured 12 miles of track and moved raw materials and manufactured product to and
from the shipping facilities and around the plant complex. The railway featured an
incline and hoist up a sheer cliff about 100 feet above sea level to move both cars
and locomotives between the raw materials dock and the plant (see artist's rendering
below, looking down from the top).
 Brian
Wilson, who lives in British Columbia about 3 miles from the island, has designed
James Island Explosives Plant to capture the feeling of the raw materials
dock, incline and hoist, and the clifftop scene.
As drawn for On18/O9 scale, the layout is somewhat larger than most of the micros
in this Gallery. We're including it here because it definitely is designed in the
spirit of micro layouts -- focusing on a single area of intense operational interest
-- and because it would be easy to make it smaller to meet the micro size criterion
of four square feet in area.
The hoist is the focus of interest, and Brian plans to build it as a working model
(perhaps he'll provide us with the details later!). At the clifftop, three sidings
offer destinations for loaded cars. Notice that both upper tail tracks of the wye
will hold a locomotive and at least one car, allowing convenient shunting of any
of the topside sidings. Adding a cassette at the right side of the clifftop (behind
the Power House) could represent the offstage powder dock, yet another switching
destination.
An optional cassette is suggested for the lower level, to extend the raw materials
wharf for additional switching operations and for introducing newly-arrived cars
onto the layout. Rolling stock can be highly varied, but will mostly be short, industrial
narrow-gauge stock. The real-life railway used Porter steam locos, Davenport diesels,
and electric locomotives at various times in its history.
This layout can be constructed in almost any scale, from HOn30/OO9 to Gn15. Trackwork
and switches will probably need to be handlaid, unless somewhat more room is available
to accommodate commercial turnouts.
By the way, the explosives plant was removed completely after 1980, and the James
Island is now privately owned. If you're interested in buying it, the owner has put on
a price tag of $49 million USD, which includes a Jack-Nicklaus-designed golf course!
|
|