9 Design considerations 2 - skill and energy & willpower

In this post I want to talk about design considerations that are influenced by skill as well as energy and willpower.

Design considerations as influenced by - skills

Do you have the necessary skills to build a home layout? And maintain it too? I was well on my way to become an avid module builder when my health crashed. I haven't been able to even repair the problem areas of the modules that had made it to Fremo meetings in a bare state or reconstruct them. Let alone scenic them. But meanwhile I still have what's commonly referred to here in the Netherlands as two left hands. Or to put it bluntly, DIY skills need some serious improvement. The only thing I'm good at is painting walls and windows. I don't like woodwork and after building a couple of modules from scratch myself and now like to buy kits for my modules made from custom lasered lightweight plywood. I'm not very good with a soldering iron either. Which I found out after a particular bumpy ride over sidewalks for my modules when I transported them to a Fremo meeting. The trains don't run when there is no electricity flowing to the rails...

This is not insurmountable as it mostly consists of doing it and doing it again but better. It's the getting of my behind that is a big problem right now. Luckily motivation has increased considerably so that helps.

Design considerations as influenced by - energy and willpower

If one thing has been made clear to me in the past few of years it is the fact that I no longer have the raw amount of energy to smash through anything that stands in my way. Nor do I have the willpower to do so (and other things) anymore. Can I sustain enough interest in building a home layout and see it through to a stage that I can run trains? Will my still relatively scarce energy be completely eaten by going back to work and survive a work environment as the person I am? Will my lack of DIY skills mean it takes me longer to get to the point where I can run trains in a bare landscape?

Not biting off more than I can chew is therefore paramount. Designing the modelrailroad I want in phases seems the way to go. First phase has to have a continuous run option for those days when (almost) nothing goes and I just want to watch trains go in circles as a form of therapy.

8 Design considerations 1 - time and money

Time, money and space are 3 of the things you have to consider when you start the design of a model railroad. At times all three were lacking but currently it is mainly money that is lacking besides energy. The latter is a long term matter I can only patiently work at. Once it gets better in that department then money will become more freely available again as it means I can work. That, however, is not yet the case. 

In this post I want to talk about design considerations that are influenced by time and money.

Design considerations as influenced by - time

You can dream about wanting a big layout all you want but if you don't have time to build it do you have the money to buy it from a professional builder? Right now I have the time and the space but not the money or the energy. Energy will hopefully improve a lot in the coming year but if it does then I will also get back to work and hopefully full time again. That means a lot less time for activities like model railroading considering that full time means 36-40 hours PLUS travel time. The last time I worked it was 40 hours a week plus 20-30 hours of travel time to wherever my job took me that day. It also took me to a burnout as I had been ignoring a persistent problem. I don't know if I would have ended up in the same place if I hadn't ignored that problem for so long.

Another way of looking at time is that over time things change including the things that interest you. Back in 2008 I enthousiastically dove into the world of Fremo americaN, modular railroading in N scale following North American prototypes. By 2010 I had build a number of modules but for some reason or another they failed. Including on technical grounds due to problems while transporting them to the 2010 Fremo Autumn meeting in Zuidbroek here in the Netherlands. My skills were not equal to acorns on a bicycle path and small blocks used as pavement for sidewalks. Maybe if I had been given time I could have repaired it and that could have made a positive contribution to my life which was going  down the drain very fast at that point in time as it turned out. Now my interests have changed to the point that I no longer want to build modules whose theme is invented but I do want to build modules that follow a specific prototype. 

Design considerations as influenced by - money

Do you, or rather I, have the money to chase the dream of building a home layout? It ties up a lot of money, some of it (like my chosen mode of benchwork) up front. Much more so than modules do. And independent of the fact if you build, in the end, only one level or multiple levels. Right now money is still scarce. It will get better in a few months but I must still limit myself. Can I maintain momentum? This has proven to be difficult in the past.

Then again, the more money you have the more things you tend to buy. Even things that don't fit into the choosen theme. More levels do tend to lead to more locomotives and cars and you need to send them someplace which then needs to be bigger too. Which was the reason in the first place to finally get going with modules. 

In the restraint the master is revealed. 

I don't necessarily want a large layout, just one that satisfies my needs and that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, energy and not too much money. Restrictions with regard to theme can definitely help here yet every time I get a grip on this I also get back to dreaming. Something I'm very good at...

And round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin... 

7 The bridges of Mahaska and Monroe counties

I'm finding more and more interesting stuff to include on the layout. A couple of weeks ago I surfed to bridgehunter and saw some quite interesting information about bridges on the line (Scroll to the bottom of page 1). 

That led to a slight reevaluation of what to include. There are enough bridges over Muchakinock Creek in Mahaska county and Miller Creek and its tributaries in Monroe county in the 23 miles between Oskaloosa and Albia that at least some must be included. They can serve as mini scenes as well as scene breakers since I plan on having discrete scenes and the scenery will not be continous. This latter as a result of wanting to include the interchanges with the Wabash, CBQ and CRI&P in a functional way with the tracks in the right place versus the M&StL tracks. This means I have to come up with some off scene way to get the other railroads back to the right side of the M&StL tracks. Black boxes might help here and strategically placed scenery will help.

Look at the placement of the trees at this Pratt through truss bridge over Muchakinnock Creek (go to photos 5 and 6 or 23 and 31) for instance. The location is north of Givin, south of Beacon in Mahaska county, near Kent Avenue and 290th Street.

This link take you to google maps and a photo by John Marvig of the bridge looking north in the direction of Beacon / Oskaloosa. Most likely the view of this part of the modelrailroad would be from the east or right of the picture.

In the same vein, Eddyville has moved up in the list of priorities. Originally I didn't want to include it despite having a long passing siding and a double ended freight spur. It also was the only passing place in later years, after online coal traffic had almost completely dried up. But the discovery of the sand and gravel operations and its scale have led to a reevalution. The interchange with the CRI&P was also a bonus though it might be more difficult to include. But originally I only wanted the bridge over the Des Moines river, more specifically the first half of a through truss span from each end, as a prop to change levels.

This is a small bridge on the south end (Bridgeport side) of the Des Moines River crossing. The crossing consists of this bridge, a plate girder bridge, a long dam (I believe it was originally a pile trestle) and the long bridge consisting of 7 Pratt through trusses spanning both the Des Moines river and Muchakinnock creek. Pictures taken from Bing maps.

And finally just one reference to one of many crossings of Miller Creek.
Note the relative light construction of all the truss bridges. I believe the M&StL's Mikado 2-8-2 steam engines were not allowed on this line. I'm not aware of restrictions on the diesel locomotives though.

6 Resources

Here is a list of resources for modelling the M&StL. I will periodically update this. Particularly with articles and blogs.

Books:

- Gene Green, Minneapolis & St Louis in color, Morning Sun Books

- Don L Hofsommer, The Hook & Eye, A history of the Iowa Central

- Don L Hofsommer, The Tootin' Louie

- Don L Hofsommer,  The Minneapolis & Saint Louis, a photographic history

- Don L Hofsommer,  Minneapolis and the age of railways
- Dennis Holmes, Depots on the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway, CNWHS

Online:

- M&StL Yahoo group 
The group has quite a bit of information available. In the past a number of CD-ROMs were produced with much information from the collections of members as well as hard to get information from resources such as defunct magazines etc.

- CNW Historical Society 
This organisation puts out a quarterly magazine and also produces a free online magazine for modelling the CNW and predecessors. It has a good amount of M&StL coverage. The society is also the custodian of a lot of archival material, specifically socalled AFE's or Authority For Expenditure. It encompasses the period 1-1-1912 to 31-12-1956. For much of this period the M&StL was in recievership and needed approval from the bankruptcy judge for every capital expenditure. Basically the whole decisionmaking proces is preserved. Contains lots of drawings, including that of stations and yards.

Photo sites:

- Railroad pictures archives
- Railpictures 
- John Barriger John W Barriger III from 1944-1941 worked in federal service as the railroad chief of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RFC was a government organisation tasked with financial support to state and local goverments and made loans to bank, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. In this capacity he made 2 trips over the M&StL and either he or an assistant took photos during the trip. His archive is in the St Louis Mercantile Library.

- John P. Vander Maas railroadiana collection contains photos of M&StL depots. 

- Sam Cook has a number of photos online

Other resources:

- county plat maps showing who owns what land. Often the old ones have a mention of land owned by coal companies. 1930 plat book Monroe county Iowa

Troy township Monroe county. Note railways not always accurately labelled.

- Interstate Commerce Commission archives at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC. The ICC held a survey of the railroads in the years after the temporary takeover during and immediately after Worls War 1 in preparation of a permanent takeover of the railroads by the US government. Many maps, drawings and sketches were prepared and they contain a wealth of data.

5 Switching in a small yard - America-N module Yard Extension - MP 324.6 Albia

Bernd from Fremo AmericaN uploaded a video of switching on a small modulae layout. It has the feeling of what I want to accomplish with a model of Albia as Albia has about the same number of tracks.

Abia had 2 mainlines, one on each side of the depot. On one side there was a double ended track serving a freight house. A team track was nearby. On the other side were a siding and 3 yard tracks. As well as some freight customers and tracks and turntable used for servicing and turning the locomotives ad gas electric motorcars.

M&StL AFE 21-99 CNWHS collection

Albia should fit on a standard width AmericaN module, which is 40 cm wide at the endplates. It will also fit inside the 50 cm deep Ikea Ivar system I would like to use for my home layout. It has 43 cm between the vertical parts of the legs.