Previous HBS Versions

Posted by Unknown on 4:00 PM in HBS, Previous, Versions | No comments

A viewer wrote in this week about his own Hoboken Shore Railroad project, which thrilled me to no end. Always nice to have fellow travelers on a journey. I will be posting some maps and any other stuff I come across over the next few days that might help him in his track planning stages.

So, I thought I'd post probably the least helpful items first (sorry). These previous versions just happened to be the first things I ran across and are for a former house with an 11'-0 x 15'-0 office space that I was going to use for my railroad room. We moved before I could even start, but it was a good exercise.

They are iterations of the same ideas that eventually carried over into the current, larger version. Those ideas are about modeling as much of the entire railroad as possible while trying to follow the geographic twists and turns in general ways. Much of this is accomplished pretty well even in this smaller size, which is a good lesson (something about size not mattering that much?). Another interesting realization gleaned from re-examining these, is that the form factor doesn't matter that much in terms of being able to fit a track plan into this regular shape or my current room configuration.

The constraints are going to occur at the same places - the corners and turnback loops. Straight track on straight bench work is a no-brainer, but working out where the corners fall in a track arrangement is something to really consider. There is probably an article in there about strategies for using corners and turnback loops cleverly. Let me know if anyone writes it before I get around to it...

An interesting note is that the viewer will be using a vertical staging device to replace Weehawken Yard similar to my planning to use one to stand in for Croxton Yard before it gets built out. Great minds, I guess. I'll dig up my vertical staging article from the LDJ at some point as well.

Anyway, more useful items to follow under 'separate cover.'