Syd Schofield

Editors note: Welcome to the 15th article of a series on narrow gauge by Syd Schofield. In this article Syd writes about his personal interests and motivations for narrow gauge modeling. The previous article is available by clicking here, or by filtering with the category “Narrow Gauge”. Syd welcomes discussions and feedback, which can be made by clicking on the comment link at the bottom of the post.

Most of the model train hobbyists have a fascination, however slight, with the quest for travel across the great land masses. The motion from here to there and the machinery necessary to make that happen has been an interest as well as a necessity. Since man has wanted an improvement over foot sore, then animal-powered travel, he has looked at any and all machines for answers. The earliest means of movement across land sought a more level, firm, and direct path and the last one or two hundred years of progress in this effort find some interesting mechanical answers.

Consider travel support in the forms of water in canals, wheels on stone, cast iron, wrought iron, then steel. The latest technology has been with electromagnetic levitation and propulsion. As we pick a period of interest we may also consider the geography of a suitable “setting” for a modelling effort.

I’m going to use my interests as an example and then accept or reject that direction according to individual taste.

After some travel in areas served by rail transportation, both presently and throughout the early days, I came to focus on the rail systems of the Western United States and Canada. For me part of the railroad model is the geographic setting. Having done some historical and area research on foot, dirt bike, four-wheel drive, and paved road, I decided my direction was in fairly rugged mountains with a standard gauge short line overtaking a pioneering narrow gauge service to a mining and logging industry. Maybe an interchange with a larger rail line could help finance the effort through tolls an trackage rights.

Then comes the practical aspect of our imaginary miniature railroad world. A spare room came into my possession along with retirement leisure time and budget. The space, scope, and commercially available material led me to HO (1-87.1 ratio scale) standard and three foot narrow gauge with a typical (and minimum) radius of 18 inches. The general scheme was a point-to-point plan camouflaged within a continuous running balloon track at each end. That would give an option of either type of operation.

For the sake of space and the incorporation of mountain road grades, one balloon track is elevated at the end of a long grade and contained vertically within the other end balloon track. There is a wye at the higher “end” point for turning the locomotives, snow plows, observation car and other directionally-specific equipment. There is a turntable at the lower “end” point for the same purpose. As the operation was “upgraded” from HOn3 to HO, there is some dual gauge track. The remaining HOn3 occupies other terrain with steeper grades and shorter auxiliary trackage. No direction changes are available for the HOn3 and the two locomotives operate in reverse with sidings for the necessary runarounds.

A feature that I find interesting, especially in the streams and rivers in Montana, are the miles of flat water with occasional cascades. Since most railroad right-of-way tend to follow easy grades such as can be found along rivers and streams (as stated in previous articles), it seems to be a good practice to use the edge of the layout structure as a stream bed. The majority of the trackage can then follow an easy grade. The twists and turns of the stream are not so easily followed by even the tight radius curves so there are occasional tunnels as are found on prototype railroads in the mountains.

Since the geology of interest is very steep I decided to use an open frame bench work with extruded polystyrene insulation foam planks as a foundation for the scenery. I was able to make most of the scenery in modules about two feet square which makes it easy to work on when off-site. Any scenery method gets really messy and handling the fairly rugged and lightweight foam assembles is a pretty good compromise. More importantly I use the topographic map contour style of shaping the foam planks where possible.

As a side note on the foam core method of scenery construction, while confident that I was in the “plan” for the shape of the scenery features, I found that I wasn’t quite able to make it happen without changes. It has been said, “there is a statue in that block of marble – the trick is to remove everything that doesn’t look like a statue.” It’s easier to work with foam planks and shapes that pass for mountain scenery than marble.

However, for those of us not trained or talented in sculpting arts, the foam planks, latex house paint, lightweight Hydrocal in molds and SculptaMold are the materials that I found the most adaptable for making scenery. The works are then secured in position, gaps filled and colored with acrylic (again house paint mixed to suit) with a 30 to 1 wash applied with acid brushes (bag of 100 for 99 cents – no deposit no return at Harbour Freight).

So that’s my model train layout story and I’m sticking to it. Best of luck to your course of action whether it be reading the huge collection of railroad history on-line, written or video, road trips to museums and present or past rights-of-way, or train spotting, or taking on the task of building a miniature world of trains. As long as the weather permits, I’ll be out there doing some more field research trying to finalize the rock shapes and colors and moving water.