Brad's Blog

The first scene I decided to attempt, was Othello.  A picture of Othello’s idyllic scenery appeared in Barrie Sanford’s Steel Rails, and I felt drawn to it.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had some trouble getting started.  I knew nothing about building model railways. 

Because of my limited space and how high the upper levels got, I thought instead of doing things the usual way with trackwork first and scenery later, I’d do the scenery instead in 8 foot segments that I could lift up and down from the shelf as I worked on them.  I reasoned with the foam being standard thicknesses, as long as I kept the area for the tracks at the same level, I could do no wrong.

And of course, I was wrong.  Because despite my best efforts, neither the foam pieces nor the shelving was always perfectly level.  So I ended up with some slight rises, or uneven tracks.  Whoops.

I also knew nothing of scenery, never having done it before in my life.  Predictably, my first effort at ‘Othello’ was a dud.

So here’s the plan.  Basically it’s four levels of Home Depot melamine (?) shelves.  The kind you put on the wall using L brackets that screw anyplace into the wall.  The room I’m in is constructed of chipboard walls, so it works.

The original plan was ‘simple’.  Trains would start, say, at the bottom by the door, run around the room, run up a helix positioned at the end of that circuit, then run *under* the level (in a space cut out under the foam base for the scenery) all the way back to the end of the room where it had started, take one final turn which brought the train on top of the scenery, and then on it went. 

The problem with this design was two fold – one, there were certain scenes where the train simply could not be under the scenery – ie. deep river gorges.  The second was that it chewed up a ton of space at both ends of each level – at one end for the main helixes between levels, and at the other for the final turn and rise up, which required a 15" radius.

As time went on, I came up with another idea.  The door is neatly tucked in one corner of the room.  So why not make build a corner-shaped elevator that could move trains between levels.  With 14" space between the top of the door and ceiling, it could be manoeuvred out of the way when the door needed to be open or when not in use.  The elevator itself would consist of a motor driving (via sprockets and chains) a series of threaded poles, similar to those used on a paper sheeting machine I had worked on as a kid.  The motor could be mounted on the floor and drive two gears there, which in turn would turn two of the elevator poles (or legs) on one side, which in turn would transfer power to the other two legs via a chain run up near the ceiling.

Perfect!  But I didn’t like the idea of the train stopping, waiting for the elevator to move, then unloading and carrying on.  Too clunky.  And the space available meant I could not run very long trains, as they would not fit on the elevator platform.  I wanted something more fluid and flexible.  Then I had a brainstorm – why not combine the elevator with a helix, such that the elevator could park itself between two levels, and the train could move seamlessly from one to the next?  Now we’re getting the best of both worlds – and the helix is going in a space that can’t be used for the model anyway.  Best of all, that corner of the room affords space for a helix up to 40" or more in diameter, which should be enough to rise 12" – which is the distance between the levels.  I dubbed it the ‘helixator’.

Anyway, here are my crude plans.  I never did master the track planning software, and so I’ve suffered as a result.  But this is the main idea.  I’ve got the levels labelled backwards too.. Level 1 is the very top level, Level 4 is the bottom.  The idea was to start at Brookmere, BC, with a nice large yard, then move up the levels to Hope, BC, with each wall of the room dedicated to a scene – say a major bridge, section facilities, etc.  Each scene would be done with as little or no compression as possible, and would be as accurate as possible.  If that meant segments were lost, so be it.

Now of course, KVR people would say wait – you have it backwards!  In terms of elevation, Brookmere was at the ‘top’ of the Coquihalla, Hope at the bottom.  You have it backwards!  And they would be correct.  Probably would have made more sense to have Hope on the bottom level, and have the train run up the four levels to Brookmere up top.  The problem was Brookmere was too big to be on the top level.  It would have been hard to see and impossible to operate on.  So I reversed it.  This also allowed my most prized scene – of the Quintette Tunnels through the Coquihalla river gorge, to occupy an honored spot on the top.

Anyway, with plan in hand, on I went.

It started off as a ‘neat little model train around my office’.  The plan was to build a small shelf above the door, and create a free-styled n-scale railway to run up there, purely for entertainment value.

The shelf got built, and for a brief while I had tracks in place and an n-scale train making its way around the room as planned.  But it wasn’t enough. 

Going back to my earliest visits to Hope BC a decade ago, I had had a fascination with the vanished Kettle Valley Railway, especially the legendary Coquihalla subdivision.  I first encountered the KVR via Barrie Sanford’s Steel Rails and Iron Men: A Pictorial History of the Kettle Valley Railway.  At once, I was entranced.  Especially with the old black and whites of the ‘Quintette’ Tunnels near Othello, but really with the whole thing.  The unforgiving terrain.  The station names inspired by Shakespeare.  I decided then I would yield most of my den towards a recreation of as much of it as I could cram in – an n-scale recreation of one of BC’s most infamous railroads.  4 shelves clinging to my wall the way the KV once clung to cliffsides.  An elevator system to move trains between.  That was 5 years ago.  How have things progressed?

A little.  🙂  You learn a lot in the modelling hobby – chiefly what not to do.  This blog is a belated diary of my efforts.  I am nowhere near done, and I have plenty of obstacles to overcome thanks to my difficulties with planning.  But the progress I have made, halting and between life and other hobbies, inspires me to keep at it.  I hope you will enjoy reading and seeing my foibles as much as I have getting into them.  To be clear: I am not a pro.  I entered this with *zero* experience in building model railways.  Everything I have done, I have learned pretty much on the fly.  This blog will take you through my efforts, my experimentation, right back to the beginning in 2009 and onward.  Feel free to keep checking in for updates.  This blog is intended both as display and as diary of progress.