2 Distractions

I have to put the design of the home layout on ice for a bit due to lack of funds. I plan on using Ikea's Ivar storage system as benchwork as I need to store stuff under the modelrailroad. I also want the layout to be easily covered to protect it and I want good lighting.

I'm one of those people who needs to see things in the flesh modelrailroad wise before things sink in as I still have problems visualising N scale. Got some information from my American sources and it seems I have to do some serious thinking as not even a 50 cm deep Ivar is deep enough to contain 4 (of 8) sorting tracks, 2 (of 4) arrival / departure tracks, siding, main and more freight tracks than I thought there were in the South Yard of Oskaloosa Iowa. Not to mention the trackage taken over after the CBQ left town in 1934.

I also need to think about the way I want the storage of trains handled. Current thinking is surround staging on the upper deck featuring Albia Iowa and Hickory Hill down to the Des Moines River at Bridgeport / Eddyville with active interchange by Wabash in Albia and CBQ in Maxon.
The lower deck will  contain South Yard at Oskaloosa down to the Des Moines River at Eddyville. Staging here could be done on a deck below that as the line to Peoria would need to curve into the room and thus a small helix could be used.

Lately I've been thinking about using an elevator to go from one deck to another as there is not enough length available to go from one deck to another unless I go to a helix that blocks too much of the small room (which is 360x205 cm) and I don't fancy a twice around through the same scene to gain height or even more.

But all the research is an enjoyable thing so that's no great problem. I do need to think of a way to present it here. If only to make better sense of the information and to see where there are still holes in the information. Would also help in presenting it in this blog. 

Meanwhile, a German friend offered to help me with the design of the home layout as well as the reconstruction of some Fremo americaN modules I want to reuse. Theme for that is a section of track just south of Interstate 80 in Grinnell Iowa called G&M Junction and a broad curve just south of it. The M in G&M stands for Montezuma and is a nice place to model also, particularly since the Rock Island had a slightly larger station right next to it but coming from the south wereas the G&M (later Iowa Central then M&StL) came from the northwest via a small place called Ewart.

And then there is Story City Iowa. Another end of the line station on a M&StL branch. This line had its junction at Minerva Junction just northwest of the division point of Marshalltown Iowa and went in a northwesterly direction. The line was build by the Iowa Central & Northwestern, an Iowa Central subsidiary.

I have enough plywood lying around to do Montezuma or Story City. The latter I might do as it is simpler to build and above all easier to transport by train, all straight modules. The Story City line has been reasonably docmented and the line will be a subject for the next layout of a well known M&StL modeller in the USA.

This shows the situation at G&M junction in 1937. The curve is just south of it *with the two groups of trees at the east side and will include the road crossing the railway. Source is http://www.historicaerials.com/

Anyway, that's it for this time.

1 Introduction

Hello and welcome to this new blog in which I will document the gathering of information for, the design of and hopefully the building of a N scale model railroad set in 1950s Iowa and based on the south end of the 10th district of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad between Oskaloosa to the north and Albia to the south.

Who am I?
My name is Naomi and I'm an archivist (by trade and inclination) living in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I have long been fascinated by the M&StL. I can trace this back to a chance buying of a photograph, showing red and white EMD F units approaching the Oskaloosa, Iowa, passenger station from the north, back in 1988 at a meeting of the Contactgroep NMRA Nederland. I had just joined that group and at the twice a year meeting there was a man selling all kinds of postcards and photographs he had collected when he lived in the USA.

My second purchase was a postcard of Wabash Railway EMD F units at a location in southern Ontario, Canada. Another fascination (but less intense) was born. Much later I found out that both railroads had one point in common. That point being Albia in southern Iowa.

For a long time I didn't know what to choose to model and since my railroad interests are rather broad, I collected lots of stuff like books and magazines but never actually build a home modelrailroad. The usual other things like time, space and money interfered too. Around 2006 I made the choice to concentrate on American prototypes and specifically the M&StL. Since then I have dabbled in building modules as I became a member of Fremo and have participated in meetings of the Fremo americaN N scale group since 2009.

However, a severe physical illness (the result of a medical treatment gone wrong) in 2011 and following years (I'm still not in the clear) let to severe mental health problems as well. So I never got around to fixing the problems I had with the modules I had build.

It's only now, october 2015, that I feel well enough to try again. I sorely missed having something to run my model trains on. I didn't even have something to let my locomotives go back and forth or in a circle. I'm convinced it would have proven quite beneficial for my mental health if I had.

So, come along as I try to organise my thoughts, gather information from numerous sources and finally start getting active again in model railroading.