Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

Proposed Welztalbahn Extension Phase 1a Almost 8 months ago, I had submitted a Draft EIR for approval by the local land-use committee. Since then I have built the Untergroeningen modules that make up phase 1 of the draft EIR. Along the way I revised my operations plans towards intensifying traffic through Untergroeningen. This requires more staging capacity behind Untergroeningen. When I had Untergroeningen set up a couple weeks ago , I realized that I could set up a modular staging yard along the front of the garage. If I made that staging yard slim enough, I could still fit 4 tracks and later make it fit into the aisle between the garage cabinets with just under 2 feet to spare. It's tight, but feasible assuming no active staging, and no reblocking of freight trains in staging. Proposed Welztalbahn Extension Phase 2 The Staging yard is only 25cm wide and equipped with a partial Fremo-Puko faceplate, so that two of the 3 standard alignment holes are usable. There is a separate p...

This how I was planning to arrange the turnout to the layout extension. The branch to Talheim curves off to the right, and the branch to the extension goes straight towards the wall in parallel to the freight tracks on the left, and will leave the room through a minimum-sized hole. Alternatively, I could swap the 2234 piece to the foot of the turnout, and run at a slight angle away from the freight tracks and hit the wall a little bit further to the right. This would allow me to keep the rock between the branch and the track bumper, dress it up with some more bushes and thus gain a view block that would hide most of the hole from the Talheim operator who sits further to the left. Making the respective change on the track plan confirms it's feasible with some minor adjustments to the connecting track.

[ Murrbahn posts ] Murrbahn project - Staging level I wrote about my plans for the Murrbahn layout project last year . All Murrbahn-related posts are linked here . This morning I had a realization: Would it be possible to remove the two double-slip turnouts where staging is connected to the mainlines to the rest of the layout, if I ran a track around the outside of the helix? The plan above shows the staging level of my Murrbahn project. The brown double-track represents the main line south of Backnang towards Stuttgart as it descends from the lower level of the layout. The outer track in the three-track helix represents the Kleine Murrbahn from Backnang to Marbach. The inner two tracks of the helix represent trackage north of Gaildorf/West on the upper level towards Schwaebisch-Hall/Hessental and Crailsheim. Since this is a rather long run in the helix it's double-tracked to allow for opposing movements in and out of staging to the north-end of the visible layout. All the off-lay...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Untergroeningen will be the first larger segment I'm building. This will eventually be the terminus of the Obere Kochertalbahn branch line. The turnouts are Peco SL91 and SL92. It combines several features and industries found on the branch into one station, since I don't have the space to model much of the branch.

I took the module plans for Untergroeningen and Gaildorf/West as planned for the future Murrbahn layout, and reviewed how they might fit into garage as a modular extension outside the Welztalbahn layout room. In the garage the layout needs to yield to other uses of available real estate. However, I've come up with a way that has a chance to be workable until we are ready for a larger bedroom shuffle in the house. The grey blobs represent storage cabinets that can be moved if necessary, but do need to remain in the garage. The brown blobs are shelving units that need to remain in place and can not be used for the layout. The redish blob on the left is my work bench. On the Murrbahn layout, Untergroeningen will be a terminal station, but since the prototype station was originally planned for a possible extension towards Aalen, the track layout works as through station as well. The Untergroeningen module connects with the existing Welztalbahn layout on the south-side of Emsingen wher...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. The north end of the freight area is dominated by several wood storage and loading areas operated by Gebr Closs. A short Internet search did not reveal any information about this company. A set of regular and double-slip turnouts allows for run-around moves in the freight area. As the single track main line leaves the station area it crosses a small access road at grade. I simplified the turnout arrangement in the freight area and moved the turnouts further north to gain as much space as possible for car storage. I will model the wood loading ramp and facilities at the north end of the tracks. On the main tracks I flipped the sequence of the turnouts to tracks 1 and 3 in order to avoid an S-curve coning out of the top of the helix. The railroad crossing will be modeled just to the right of the yellow area and the street will curve away to the wall. This concludes the series of articles abou...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. North of the freight shed is the freight yard of Gaildorf/West. These tracks are used for cars going to and from the weg branch line, local customers, as well as for layover of weg passenger equipment between runs as needed. Bahnhofsstrasse extends past the freight shed and turns into the access road for a team track to facilitate trans-loading between trucks and freight cars. This is used primarily for loading wood onto R-cars. There is a track to the freight shed platform and a storage track next to it. A very unique and peculiar feature of the freight area is the branch line track from track 1 cutting across all yard tracks and continuing on the street side of the station building. weg trains departed from the street side of the station until 1967, afterwards the line starts at track 1at the station building. The main line tracks extend past the passenger platforms near the station build...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. Moving along to the passenger area, the tracks straighten out. There are 3 platforms and no over- or undercrossing. Hence passengers need to cross the tracks at grade to reach their respective platform. The platform for track 3 is generously wide at roughly 7 meters, while it's only about 3.5 meters for track 2. The plan indicates track center distances at 11 meters and 5.5 meters respectively. Track 1 has a wide platform in front of the station building. To the left of the station building is a small news stand, including a room for firewood storage. It appears that the platform fence is still in place. To the right of the station building appears to be the platform gate . Platform gates started to get abolished in Germany in 1965, and opened up everywhere in 1974. Thus it's feasible that platform access at Gaildorf/West was still limited in 1971. To the right of the station building i...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. The space I have available for Gaildorf/West is 470 cm long. I need to fit the station and the approach tracks. Let's take a look at the prototype plan in more detail and start with the south end of the station. The main line from Stuttgart exits the Kappelesbergtunnel and curves into the station area. Switching movements are allowed right up to the tunnel portal, but not into the tunnel. The weg branch line (short-dashed line) curves away to the bottom of the plan. There is a third track between the two that runs towards a maintenance of way building and storage area. I have several photos with cars or locomotives stored on this track, but it could just as well be still in operation to park MoW equipment, so I'd like to retain this track. I have space to represent the MoW building, as well as one of the two storage areas indicated in the plan. The storage area is crossed by a 20kV powe...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission.   With just over 1000 meters track length (a bit over 3000ft) between first and last turnout and 2 sidings, Gaildorf/West is not a particularly large station. However, in HO this would still be 11.5 meters in a straight line, plus the approaches on either side of the station. Building Gaildorf/West with some gentle length compression as a set of segments with FREMO end plates would be a lot of fun, but I don't have regular FREMO modular meets in gym-sized sport halls within traveling distance, so that's not an option. Instead, I considered what functions this station will need to fill if I were to use a representation of Gaildorf/West as the northern-most modeled station for my Murrbahn project: Scheduled and unscheduled meets of northbound and southbound trains, as well as higher priority trains passing lower priority trains on this single-track main line. Regular passenger service st...

On a whim I decided tonight to print the Untergroeningen track plan and see what this looks and feels like at full size. I checked accuracy of the print with some turnouts and it's certainly close enough to be usable. The top left corner of the plan is missing because my printer decided to be stupid... Things to note: Even at 2.80m end to end, the plan feels compressed (which it is). Adding another 30-50cm of track in front of the station building would probably be good, but I'm not going to have the space for that. I'm considering shortening the tail tracks to get longer house tracks, though that's a balancing act with making switching the sawmill track not seriously annoying. In fact, I kind of want longer tail tracks already... Building this as segments with Fremo module heads according to the Puko norm is definitely feasible. Modules would have sufficient room around the tracks and buildings to add some nice rural town scenery. I need to think about this some more....

Well, I had some time on yet another flight across the ocean , so I started over with the Backnang track plan. I'm not willing to compromise too much on track length or fundamentally change how the tracks work. Part of the motivation for modeling this station at some point in the future is operating the rather busy prototype schedule with the minimal amount of tracks as present in the prototype. I've found that every turnout and every track connection was critical to enable fluid operations. In earlier versions of this track plan, I had mirrored the arrangement in an effort to keep the orientation of the single / double-track arrangements, the station buildings against the backdrop, and maintain the left-hand bend of the prototype. This time around, I kept the track arrangements as in the prototype, and simply look at the station from the North. Thus the station buildings are now against the aisle. Having the buildings in the way might be a problem for locomotive changes and r...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Main Level In this updated version of the track plan I tried to address short-comings of the previous version . Not much changed on the main level. I straightened out the curve on the left of Backnang station and am now going through the closet wall. I also locked down the space for industrial area, matching the area of the Untergroeningen station above it. Thinking through traffic patterns and how engine changes will work, I think I need to flip direction assignments of tracks 3 and 4 to better match the track work on the right-hand side of the station. In Backnang many trains changed power from steam- to electric-powered locomotives. The problem is that currently there is no efficient way for a waiting engine on track 7 to get to a Stuttgart-bound train standing on track 4.  If Stuttgart-bound trains arrived on track 3, the steam locomotive can uncouple and pull forward to the cross-over near the West-end of the storage tracks and head back to the turntable vi...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Murrbahn in HO: Main level I had some spare time recently, so I spent some of that on the track plan for my Murrbahn project . I'm aiming to model a section of the Murrbahn from Waiblingen to Schwaebisch Hall - Hessental , specifically the section between Backnang and Gaildorf West in the early 1970's. I chose a compressed version of Murrhardt as my third town. There's a private branch line to Untergroeningen, too, again very compressed to include only the station area of Untergroeningen. This room won't be available for several years. The point of doing the track plan now is to get an idea about layout design elements I could incorporate. How they would fit together and identify opportunities for layout segments and modules I might be able to build in advance of "the big project". I wrote some givens and druthers in an earlier post . The key constraints are minimum radius of 50cm (preferred 60cm or larger) on visible sections, and 42.3cm ...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Murrbahn Upper Level. 1box=10x10cm I continued with the plan I started last week . Gaildorf West is along the bottom edge of the room with the helix down to staging in the lower right corner. The middle of the room has the weg branch line to Untergroeningen on a pensinsula. I very intentionally only included the two end-points of that line to allow for branch line trains to run through some scenery along the way. The main line from Gaildorf West towards Backnang runs through the Kappelestunnel and on a narrow shelf around the room with the town of Murrhardt modeled in the upper right corner. The maximum train length I'm shooting for is 180 cm (5x 26.4m passenger carriages + locomotive), so each station should have at least one siding that fits a maximum length train, and there needs to be at least 5m distance between the first turnouts of neighboring stations to leave space for the appropriate entry signals. I want to run operations on this layout. Passenger tra...