by Dave Abeles/photos by the author except as noted
Squeezing a modern HO scale trunk line into my modest 25×32’ basement required a lot of compromise. It’s just plain hard to fit a large piece of main line railroad into your house. Despite the relatively small scale of our empires there is just no way we can capture all the vast outdoors without compression. And compression means compromises: tangents end up shortened or eliminated, curves become tighter, grades must be steeper and, especially with trunk lines, miles shrink.
On a more positive note, good and creative modeling can obscure the compromises by creating the illusion of more space. The more our eye is satisfied, the better the illusion we have created. Visually, our painstakingly crafted models look better when rolling through realistic scenery that fits the era of our layout. Scenery is modeling, too.
Still, those compromises we have to make to accommodate even a large basement – the excessive curves, routes turning back into the same scene – distract viewers and operators from focusing on our modeling successes. And yet this is precisely where careful scenery design and construction can change things for the better. Clever scenery can camouflage distractions and allow obvious compromises to become part of the grand illusion that is any model railroad.
ABOVE: Conrail SD40-2s lead an eastbound freight by the former New York Central tower at CP 293 (“SJ”) in April 1988. After it was no longer used to control train movement, Conrail used it as a local yard office until it was torn down in 1995. —C.E. Turley photo
A key element toward that illusion is using structures to capture the imagination. Structures built in the heyday of the railroad often stand longer than their original purpose remains on the prototype — especially for modelers building scenes of railroads from the 1970s through today. Many of the original trackside structures are gone or modified from their designed use – but lend a hint to the history of the railroad.
The goal in designing and building my proto-freelanced Onondaga Cutoff (September 2020 RMC) was to provide a platform to capture the aura of Conrail at the top of its game. In 1994, Conrail was an efficient Class 1 railroad operating the former New York Central “Water Level Route”across New York State, providing an important link between Selkirk Yard and Chicago. While that vision has always guided construction of the Onondaga Cutoff, the realities of my space consistently push back.
ABOVE: Before ballast was applied to the main line, track was inspected and leveled to ensure the best performance from the turnouts.
At both ends of the modeled main line, the need for turnback loops to help the route gain elevation created four distinct segments of main line at different elevations along the back wall of the railroad space. The modeled main necessarily passed through the scene twice. Add in those multiple levels and we have a three-dimensional visual puzzle through which our railroad must pass, limiting options in all three dimensions.
One place where the pushback has been most severe is the west end of the OC at Control Point (CP) 294. Here, the double-track main line is in the foreground and passes through a universal interlocking. Due to the reality of available space, that interlocking plant is located immediately in front of the home signals at CP 274 — the same double-track main at the far eastern end of the modeled territory “20 miles” away. A train passing 294 eastbound would head up the hill, run the length of the railroad and then pass 274 downhill at the end of its run. What that means is that both 294 and 274 are represented less than 10 inches apart from each other on the bottom level of the layout right up against the basement wall — but less than12 inches beneath the main line tracks on the top level. It is tight, in all directions!
