As my Lockwood & San Emigdio diorama is getting down to the details, I'm thinking about doing something in HO, with enough track to do some switching.
This was spurred in part when I came across an old track plan called the Gum Stump & Snowshoe. It was originally designed by Chuck Yungkirth, a pioneer model railroader, in the late 1950s or early 1960s. His version was a 1 x 6 foot shelf, kind of a tour-de-force microlayout/switching puzzle. I spent some time fiddling with it in Anyrail, expanding it from the original 1 x 6 feet, to 16 inches by 7 or 8 feet.
Here's his version:
One of the criticisms of this plan is that there's no run-around track, so switching all the sidings with a single engine is virtually impossible. But I believe this was intended as a two-engine switching puzzle, with two engineers having to cooperate to complete the switching task. Still, I'd want to add a run-around because I'd mostly be running it by myself.
Here is is redrawn with a short run-around track added:
One of the challenges of the Gum Stump has always been getting the high track (the spurs on the left side) up high enough to cross over the lower track -- in Yungkurth's version, it would have been a 6 percent or better grade. Even stretching it out a little here, it's about 5 percent.
As others have done, I altered it so that the high track doesn't have to pass over the lower track, so really, the grade can be anything you want, or none at all. It makes it a bit less challenging to run, and perhaps less scenically interesting, but it lets me reduce the grades and makes it a bit more suited to rod locomotives rather than Shays or small diesel switchers. I've kept the upper spurs at 3 inches in elevation (I'm assuming HO scale here) and routed one of the spurs to a bridge over the lower-level "main line" just for scenic interest. The steepest grade as drawn is about 4 percent.
Finally, here's a revised version -- which is what I will probably build. It's designed to fit in on a wall in my garage/train room, and also to potentially be incorporated into a larger B&V layout that I hope to build eventually, at the end of the Stauffer branch. The buildings on the upper-right are a small mine complex, possibly the Banta Model Works Little Creek Mine kit. The other buildings might include a freight house, a very small whistle stop type station, and a couple of stores or other commercial buildings representing "downtown" Stauffer.
A 3D view from Anyrail:
This unit, with a little trimming, will fit the lap-and-branch version of the B&V track plan I've shown in other posts, roughly where the yellow rectangle is:
The lower-level track at the far right end of the shelf would be non-operational as part of the shelf layout, but it's a nod to the overpass on the original Gumstump plan, provides some scenic interest, and is a place to park an extra locomotive and/or a car or two. If I incorporate this into the larger layout, it would obviously become part of the main line.
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