DelawareAndHudson

But Maiden didn't play till Sunday. And yes, I caught Nicko's drumstick. Only took me 21 years of Maiden concerts. Jason C Indiana

Chris, This one might also be a bit larger than what you're looking at but it's one of my favorites for a small layout. It's on Page 70 of Carl's Scrapbook at the bottom of the page. Layout is called Iota. The original was set in Oklahoma but it is generic and 'American' enough that the basic concept could work pretty well in nearly any North American setting. http://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-70-february-2008/ I don't love building benchwork so this layout is on my list to do using a hollow core door for a base. The original was 17"x56". Using a HCD as a base, mine will between 18"x80" and 24"x80" depending on how much space I decide I need for scenery and structures. Mine will be set in Upstate NY as the end of an old New York Central branch that has been cut back over the years and now the little community of East Iota is the current end of the line. Being set in Upstate NY, I'll have a feed mill instead of a grain elevator. The part of NY that I grew up in, agriculture was primarily dairy farms or apple orchards so it's far more common to have a feed mill receiving inbound grain and feed products than an elevator shipping grain out of the area. The apple business had long been lost to trucks as far as I can tell by the mid-70's. The siding in the picture and drawing to the left of the road will probably be a lumber/building supply yard and the siding on the right side of the station will have a small oil dealer at the end and a section of that same siding closer to the station will be a team track with an old wooden loading dock giving me three permanent customers plus any random customers I think of using the team track. We don't have as many exhibition type shows here but my hope is to bring East Iota to a couple of shows a year when it's done. I'd love to see the exhibition layout concept grow here in the US. We've long had modular layouts that setup at shows but the 'one man band' type layouts don't seem as common, at least at the shows I've attended over the years. Jason

Maybe look for something like a Chicago & North Western S-1 in the "Route of the Streamliners" scheme. That will set solidly in the 1950's and give you a locomotive that will go well with the older stock you picked up. Here's a picture of one from 1951. http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0102/cnw1256.jpg Or an SW1 if you prefer EMD's. https://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/910-9227 Jason

Lots of freight car footage in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7uZ8i1S-Bg and this one too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ADISGkLSI

Chris, Don't feel stupid. No point in that. How would you know if you have no real frame of reference? The earliest photo I've come across of the WC GP38-2's is from 2000. The WC acquired the GP38-2's when they purchased the Algoma Central Railroad. If you haven't noticed yet, North American railroads don't rush right out and repaint everything when they merge, change names, paint schemes, etc. Just too much rolling stock out there to get to all of it. In the past few years, I've seen a very small handful of Great Northern and Northern Pacific painted cars on Norfolk Southern here in Indiana. Those railroads along with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle merged in 1970 to form the Burlington Northern. The Burlington Northern itself merged with the Santa Fe to create BNSF in 1995. More than 40 years and TWO mergers and you can still occasionally see GN and NP cars. Not common but they are still out there. Modeling a North American railroad gives you a great deal of latitude in what is correct or plausible for any given time frame. Freight cars see 40 or more years of service here and locomotives....there is some seriously old stuff out there still running. Here's a link to a photo roster of the WC. Might not be every single locomotive ever owned by the WC but it's probably close. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locolist.aspx?id=WC More photos at the Fallen Flags site. Go down to the "W" section. http://rr-fallenflags.org/ As far as trying to figure out what cars to add to your fleet, I'd recommend you spend some quality time on YouTube watching Wisconsin Central videos. Lots of them on there. Also check out any railroad videos shot in the Chicago region. That was the south end of the Wisconsin Central so pretty much any video showing freight trains on any of the Class Ones in the Chicago region from 1990-present will help you become familiar with what you might see on the WC. If you want an inexpensive kit that will go a long ways to giving your 'home road' Wisconsin Central fleet the 'look' you're after, try to find a dealer that carries Accurail. They have a 50' exterior post boxcar decorated for WC. It might not be 100% accurate in the details, but it will go a long ways towards giving the 'flavor' of the Wisconsin Central and fairly economically at that. One of the nice things that Accurail does is sell decal sets for many of their kits allowing you to build a fleet with different numbers of the same boxcar. http://www.accurail.com/accurail/ART/5600/5638.jpg Accurail also has a WC grain hopper http://www.accurail.com/accurail/art/2000/2004.jpg Remember, YouTube!!! Jason

This probably won't meet the 4'-5' requirement but if you can find some way to get a bit more space, say maybe 18"x72" or 18"x84", you can do a really nice version of Mike Tylick's O scale Pioneer Valley in HO scale. The Pioneer Valley is set in New England but you can make it look Wisconsin without much effort at all. http://www.trainweb.org/tylick/opvplan.htm http://www.trainweb.org/tylick/modelopvintro.htm Again, bigger than 4'-5' but an interesting layout that could also easily fit a Wisconsin Central theme is Nick Palette's 'Hallsville, Pennsylvania' layout. http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/8587/hallsvilleconraillayout.jpg Operate it from inside the layout and flip-flop the locations of the industries that are against the backdrop to place them on the outer edges of the layout. If there's a chance you could get a corner location in a room, say 4'x'4 along each wall or even 6' on one wall and 3' on another, you could easily bend the Pioneer Valley plan or convert the Hallsville plan to an 'L' shape. Sorry I don't have any smaller suggestions. I'm not really good at planning or thinking in some of the compact sizes you folks build in. Jason C Indiana

There's shelf layouts, spare room layouts, garage layouts, basement fillers, and then there is THE BARN FILLER. Found this on Youtube. Ken McCorry's massive Penn Central layout. Over 7 minutes of video and I don't think the train ever passed through the same scene twice nor did it do a complete lap around the layout from the comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ODnHRbwGVw Here's some pictures of the layout. Make sure to check out the picture of the real barn. That's where the layout lives. http://www.phillynmra.org/archives/layout/ken-mccorry-penn-central-central-region-ho Model Railroader ran an article on this layout years ago and considered it possibly the largest private home layout in the world. Jason

F-UnitMad, To be fair, I have no idea what percent of layouts over here are basement fillers. Even a basement filler can mean an awful lot of things. One layout I have seen is something along the lines of 35'x55', two levels and in one spot, three levels. It's HUGE. It's a pretty accurate rendition of a secondary mainline. It takes a pretty big crew to operate. Most definitely a model of a route vs a place. I think that layout is in the top 10% size wise but by no means the biggest out there. For all the press dedicated to the huge layouts, I think the more common size is the spare room/one bay garage/partial basement. 100-300 sq ft range. I think there is a growing interest in modeling a Place instead of attempting to model a large route over here. James McNab has built a great layout based on a single short branch of the Iowa Interstate Railroad. You can check it out here: http://www.iaisrailfans.org/gallery/MJMGrimesLine It's also been in several magazines in the past couple of years. You can probably see a lot of similarities in James' approach to Lance Mindheim. While not exactly small layouts, they are not huge mainline oriented layouts either. Fideility to prototype and single crew operation trump multi-train operation. The annual Model Railroad Planning magazine almost always has a single scene/town layout. A friend of mine built a layout a few years back that was based on a branch. While it did include a section of a mainline, the junction and the branch were the main focus of the layout. The mainline was actually just an oval with only 10'-15' exposed, the area around the junction with the branch. The layouts that currently interest me are ones like Nick Palette's Hallsville, PA layout, Mike Tylick's O-scale Pioneer Valley layout (Sept-Dec 1994 Model Railroader) but done in HO scale on a 24"x80" hollow core door, etc. Basically things built on one or two modules. Also drew up a layout that is about 11'x15' and loosely inspired by Nick's Hallsville layout combined with a yard from Ian Rice's Small, Smart & Practical layout book to make a forer NYC line as a Penn Central era branch called the Hallsville Secondary. It's overlaid with a former Pennsy branch that runs on an embankment/fill above the the Hallsville Secondary. The Pioneer Valley layout comes first though. It's smaller and more manageable right now. Jason

A few observations: -- Model Railroader/Kalmbach IS an American based and focused magazine/company.......so.....MOST of the articles will reflect that -- "Small" layouts in the US/Canada tends to be larger than "small" layouts in the U.K. On average, we simply have more space to work with -- Our trains shows aren't based on the "exhibition culture" that I see in the U.K. shows as shared by many of you in pictures here so it is not nearly as common to built a Plank or Micro to take to a show here. Personally, I think this is unfortunate. I'd make an effort to attend shows like you have. I'm bored with the typical American train show. -- The dominant U.S. magazine (Model Railroader) has promoted the "basement filler/garage filler/attic filler" for as long as I can remember. I've been reading MR since I was 11 years old back in 1985 and big layouts have always been the norm. They make a big deal when a layout fits into a spare room that's 10'x10' or so. -- The "Sacred Sheet/4x8" IS a small layout in the U.S. There is a long and actually logical history to using it. Every single complete train set (locomotive, cars, caboose, track power pack) I have ever seen in this country comes with an oval or circle of track. When making that first step from running a train on the living room floor to an actual train layout, most beginners still want to be able to watch trains run. The oval leaves the floor and migrates to a table. For a beginner, this is logical, practical, and a very common FIRST layout. If you've been in the hobby 10, 20, 50 years, you probably look at the Sacred Sheet with disdain. That's great, you've moved past it. But don't belittle the beginner. Everyone has to start somewhere. The Sacred Sheet still serves a purpose. While admittedly unwieldy to move, inefficient in it's use of space, and very limiting in track arrangements, the 4x8 is also the most common size of plywood available. Commonly available = commonly used. -- Model Railroader has published articles on Planks, Micros and other small non-sacred sheet layouts. Not every month but they do appear. I'm the first to admit that often the best of them are actually built by you guys in the U.K. so PLEASE write articles and send them to Model Railroader. If you want to see more small layouts in MR, then submit YOUR work. They might publish it. -- MR is currently running a new "small" layout series. January-April 2015. It's an N-scale layout built on a 36"x80" hollow core door. The hollow core door layout is the "Sacred Sheet" of N scale in the U.S. It's not a bad little layout. It has a bit of everything; continuous run mainline with staging for a few trains; freight and passenger operations, a branchline junction with the mainline, some switching, and plenty of room for scenery. Perfect? No. A good compromise for some people? Yep. But again, these project layouts aren't typically aimed at someone that has been in the hobby for years and years. They often start in the January issue for a reason; to inspire the newbie with that Christmas gift train set to make the first leap and hopefully become a life long model railroader. MR's project layouts aren't intended to be the ultimate lifelong layout. They are a stepping stone. -- One other major cultural difference that I believe really drives the large layout concept here is the idea that the ONLY way to truly enjoy model railroading is if you are operating on huge layout with a dozen or more people. Is that the ONLY way to enjoy the hobby? Of course not, but it has been strongly promoted for 2-3 decades. If one has the resources to do so, then by all means, have at it. I don't have the resources so that is not my motivation. Just some of my thoughts on why many of you feel that MR and Kalmbach aren't catering to the "Plank and Micro" crowd. Again, PLEASE write and submit articles on your Planks and Micros. I would really enjoy reading about them. Jason Cook New Haven, IN

Here's another one. RailcarPhotos http://www.railcarphotos.com/index.php? Jason

Dan, Here's some things to get you started. Old stuff - Steam Era Freight Cars http://steamerafreightcars.com/index.html TONS of articles on freight cars available for FREE on TrainLife. They appear to have most of all issues of Railmodel Journal, Model RailroaDING, and Prototype Modeler. If you're looking for modern freight car stuff (to me that is 70's and 80's because I pretty much stop at 1988), pay particular attention to Jim Eager's articles. Railmodel Journal featured his stuff and many other knowledgeable authors over the years. I have a complete set of Railmodel Journal from issue 1 to the final issue in my personal collection. I really miss getting that magazine each month. http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/model-train-magazine-index There are also a number of very useful but possibly overwhelming Yahoo Groups. For modern freight cars, check out 'Modern Freight Car List'. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MFCL/ Steam Era Freight Cars has their own list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFC/ Then there's the Baby Boomer Freight Car List that overlaps the other two. Not near as busy but it is worth joining if you're going to join the other two. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/bbfcl/ I will highly recommend that you set up some rules in your Inbox to handle the traffic from MFCL or STMFC. I have emails automatically routed to their own folders because either list can completely overrun your inbox when a new product gets announced or some other excitement occurs. Just stumbled across this one that I don't recall seeing before. Just found some D&H images I haven't seen before. http://www.boxcars.us/ I'm sure others will have more good info. Just trying to skim the archives of MFCL or STMFC would take you a year or two though. Jason

Pan Am / Guilford modern aerial views -- this gentleman is a professional photog that has taken lots of aerial photos covering a great deal of Pan Am Railways. Scroll down the page to find the links to views of yards, branches, etc. http://samayotte.com/aerial.html Jason

Here's another one. Houghton's RailImages. It appears that this site is geared towards selling prints of Ken Houghton's pictures so the images so you don't get to see large versions of the pictures. Still some good material though covering a number of the New England lines. http://www.trainweb.org/trains/ http://home.comcast.net/~railimages/ Interestingly, I also found another site with pictures from Ted Houghton. This isn't a very common name, maybe these guys are brothers. Not sure. You can view Ted's pictures under the Railroad Photos tab of his site: http://www.wxtoad.com/ Jason

Was just cleaning up some really old email and came across a link to Sam Bott's D&H photos on RR Picture Archives. This collection is from the early Guilford years on the D&H. Some great stuff in here. My only complaint is that the first 3 pages of photos all have a date of "1/1/1984" which is bogus for most/all of the shots. I can roughly date many of photos based on what locomotives are in the picture or what paint scheme and the foliage on the trees and ground. It would be nice to have more exact dates to help nail down things for modeling but I'm still happy to have these shots available. http://icedisp.rrpicturearchives.net/archivethumbs.aspx?id=27904&Page=1 For those of you interested, there are some DVD's out there made from Sam Botts videos. I can get more info if anyone is interested. Jason Cook

Tim - Thanks for posting that link to the Maine pictures. Got about halfway through the Bangor & Aroostook pictures the other night. Need to get back to it. Dave - I had completely overlooked pbase and flickr. I used flickr extensively searching for photos of feed mills and grain elevators. Jason

Here's a video I found of a Guilford (MEC) GP40 switching some tank cars around. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ery2jiyQYAI Jason

BTW, great addition to your fleet Chris! Jason

There might be a number of reasons that folks in the US aren't interested in shipping to other countries. They might think it's a huge hassle (it's not). They may have been burned previously (I have, thanks Canada Post!). Or they might simply be lazy. I have sold trains, toy tractors, and farm equipment brochures/literature to more countries than I can remember. The ONLY problem I have ever had was shipping to Canada. Simple transaction, an Atlas Undec RS-1. I shipped it, USPS tracking showed it entering Canada and then *poof*, it's gone. Frustrating. I wound up being out $60 or $70 and the locomotive. I did take a break from shipping outside the US but it didn't last. I was just frustrated. Sometimes the simplest thing to do is what Chris did, asked a friend over here to bid for him. Don't give up, not all US sellers have a fear of filling out a Customs form. Jason

Pete, Glad to contribute. I've traveled quite a bit over the years. Grew up in Upstate New York, spent 5 years in the Marine Corps which took me to northern Virginia for a little while and Southern California for four years. Drove the NY-California 3,000 mile trip 6 times and have spent the past 15 years in northeast Indiana. At last count, I had visited something like 33 of the 50 states and taken train pictures in many of them. I'll be glad to do some digging for info/pictures if you're looking for something in particular or just want some general idea of where to go railfanning. Take care, Jason

F-UnitMad's comment made me realize there might be some sites that you guys haven't come across yet so I thought I'd share some I use. One of my favorites is the Nerail Photo Archive that mostly features New York and New England photos. http://photos.nerail.org/ They also have a few companion sites that you can reach from Nerail that feature the rest of the US and a pretty fair amount of international fare. Fallen Flag Railroad Photos -- not as slick as some of the other sites but gobs of content. http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ RailPictures.net -- pretty much explains itself. http://www.railpictures.net/ Railphotos.com http://www.railphotos.com/ RR Picture Archives http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/ RailcarPhotos http://www.railcarphotos.com/ Canadian Freight Railcar Gallery http://freight.railfan.ca/ Feel free to post any sites I have missed. There's a tremendous amount of material available online. I'll add more as I remember them or come across new ones. Jason Cook New Haven, IN