Outdoor Layout Introduction

When we arrived in this house in late 2005 I knew I was going to build two layouts: one indoors in N and one outdoors. I had a pretty clear idea of the theme for the N scale layout, but I was less clear on the outdoor one.

The theme of the outdoor layout is, perhaps surprisingly, significantly influenced by the choices I made for the theme of my indoor layout. This is because there is a general maxim in model railroad design to "not do the same thing twice". Usually this is in reference to a single model railroad, as in "don't build two small yards, build one big one", because we always have limited space and we should maximize the variety of the layout within that space.

However, this can also apply to those of us who are lucky enough, or crazy enough, to build two layouts at the same time. In such a case it's probably best if the two layouts are as different from each other as possible, so as to maximize your variety and hence your overall fun.

So, my outdoor layout decisions were influenced by intentionally choosing NOT to do things I did on the indoor layout.

Eventually the theme of the outdoor layout was set as follows:

1. Narrow Gauge There is a certain romance to small narrow gauge railways, especially those that wind through difficult mountain passes to reach almost inaccessible small towns. But there is a also a strong appeal for huge mainline trains. Fortunately I satisfied my mainline urge with the indoor layout, so after seriously considering standard gauge options I decided I had to do a narrow gauge -- a style of layout I've never built before.


2. Prototype After unsuccessfully trying to find a prototype to match my long list of "wants" for the N scale layout I decided to make it freelance. So naturally this meant that the outdoor one needed to be a prototype. Initially I thought this would be a bit of a problem, as I also wanted a high-traffic prototype, and for most of their history narrow gauge railways were almost exclusively one-train-per-day-or-less lines. However, I did some research at the Colorado Railroad Museum and found that there was extensive traffic on the early narrow gauge lines, thus this meant that the era had to be ...


3. 1880s Narrow Gauge had a very brief period of about 1870-1883 where it was "in vogue" among financiers who mistakenly believed it would lead to lower costs. Eventually that belief became exposed as a myth. Even before 1883 some of the most heavily trafficked narrow gauge lines were being converted to standard gauge, and by the late 1880s the standard gauge conversion movement was in full force. Therefore, in the 1880s a narrow gauge line could have the benefit of being somewhat established yet still support a high volume of traffic, but there were few high traffic narrow gauge lines after that era.


4. Denver and Rio Grande I seriously considered other prototypes. First, I'd been flirting with the South Pacific Coast -- a line that ran from Oakland to Santa Cruz and wasn't converted to standard gauge until 1906. Of course, my interest in that line was largely caused by the fact that I lived so close to where it once ran when I lived in California. Eventually I concluded that it would be daft for me to live in Colorado, model a prototype narrow gauge line, and NOT choose a Colorado railway. (I know other Coloradoans, including Kevin Strong who writes for Garden Railways, who have chosen non-Colorado narrow gauge prototypes -- and that's cool. But this was my preference.) I then looked at other Colorado narrow gauge lines. But I eventually settled on the DRG because of what I found in ....


5. Salida and Leadville I started my prototype search by looking at timetables and route maps. I wanted something with a variety of routes yet a large volume of traffic. Something in which narrow gauge was clearly king. Salida and Leadville -- up until the introduction of the 3rd rail for standard gauge in 1890 -- was exactly the sort of region I was looking for. Salida was meant to be on the Rio Grande east-west mainline en route to Gunnison and ultimately Salt Lake City, while Leadville was originally meant to be just a high-traffic spur to the north of Salida for the purpose of serving the intense mining traffic in the area. That meant Salida was from the start a major junction, and Leadville quickly became one too, in terms of all the branches that originated there. Eventually the DRG would settle on the Tennessee Pass route via Leadville for their east-west mainline, and the route from Salida to Gunnison would become almost an afterthought. But in the 1880s all the routes in the upper Arkansas River valley were big.

These themes didn't happen overnight -- indeed I didn't settle on all of them until 2 years after we moved in and I'd had the opportunity to visit both Leadville and Salida. During that time I'd built yet another temporary layout as an experiment and also succesfully installed R/C battery power in one of my F scale Mogul locomotives. I was ready to go. The problem was, how was I going to map the prototype rail track arrangements onto my decidedly non-symmetric, non-level lot? That is the topic for the next post.

Back to Posting

Wow, over 3 months since my last post. When I started this blog I mentioned that I tend to work for several months on the model railroad, then get stuck and do nothing for several months. That's happened again, only this time there are a few differences.

First, I didn't hit a mental design block that made me stop working. In fact my next N scale tasks are all pretty straightforward -- complete the track on the middle tier of staging then move to the lower tier. In addition one of the last things I did on the N scale layout in early May was to buy the power cabinet -- so if nothing else I could get busy assembling that.

No my reason for stopping work on the N scale layout was that with May came warm weather, and with that came the annual spring outdoor maintenance. We live on a forested 1.66 acre lot with circa 500 pine trees, which in this area means 1) removal of pine-beetle infested trees (we had 5 this year), 2) general firewise clearance around the house, and 3) general outdoor maintenance (dead trees and branches, restaining kid's outdoor play structure, etc).

All that took a few weeks, and then I also tackled a long-standing task of removing the scrub oak from the lot -- about 10 condensed trailer-fulls of it in fact -- for better fire resistance and general upkeep. THAT took another few weeks.

And second, the OTHER big difference is that except for the distractions mentioned above, my biggest reason for stopping N scale work is that I'm now serious about the outdoor layout. Over the next few days I'll post about progress on that, including pictures. OK, it's not much to tell about yet in terms of trains, as the first major task is a waterfall, stream and pond. But it's progress.

(Oh, and there were other distractions as well. Son in hospital. 3 weeks travel out of country for job. Wife and Daughter testifying in Congress. You know, normal stuff. But now the momentum is strong.)