Introduction

Being a modeller in the UK has its space disadvantages to those in the US, thats well know and a fact but its also a blessing because we can build small layouts. These layouts don’t take along time to build and can be sold or retired when its time to move on to another project. What that means to me as a modeller is that I can come up with lots of concepts and choose to try them out without significant investment.

But where do we get out inspiration from, well alot of people say childhood memories.  I grew up in England 12 miles from the centre of Manchester in North West England. I can remember catching the train into Manchester after School with my father some friday evenings when we would visit him and I remember we had to catch a specific train. Why because it was loco hauled, usually by a class 37 sometimes by a class 31, locos built in the 1950’s and this was the mid 1990’s they would thrash all the way to Manchester in 24 minutes sometimes faster. When i was 14 I would catch the train home from School i knew exactly the combination of tickets that would produce the lowest fair so with the small change i saved, i could afford to buy sweets once a week, on my way home from school.   So why then have I never modelled a 1990’s british layout, well it interests me and I have fond memories but I prefer to model other things.

As I grew up in England and I model North American Prototypes I don’t have any childhood memories of GPs or SDs thrashing through town horns blazing or blagging a ride home from school from the conductor in the caboose. Inspiration for my models comes from other sources, it could be a new product announcement, a magazine article, a forum post, a book I pick up, somewhere I have visited or even someone elses layout. I am fortunate though that i don’t have to mark my path in stone as I will probably never have the space to build a basement empire. I may even be pursuaded into a particular project because I need to do so to meet an NMRA Award/Certificate.

Space Requirements – how small is small!

So I know my space is limited to what can fit through a 30″ doorway, and into the back of my vehicle which gives me a space of W36″ x L72″ x H24″ in which I can fit all the sections of my layout, the supports, the stock and all the other bits that go with presenting a layout in the UK. Now your thinking he is crazy! well i also have a roof box so I can put legs in there if they are seperate from the layout so now we have some more space. You can also place rolling stock and electronic equipment behind the front row of seats so we literally have that whole 36 cubic feet to work with. Thats an empire in the UK as what ever we build also has to fit in a spare room or at least not intrude on the living space when not being used.

So Ackerville, WI

Ackerville WI is a small town, in Washington County, Wisconsin about 10 miles from German town. Its a small place there are a few small local business but nothing that is big enough to be rail served.  What there is though is small yard and Interchange between the Wisconsin Southern (WSOR) and the Canadian National (CN) ex Wisconsin Central mainline. The tracks here for the CN continue north to Fond-du-Lac, WI and south towards the diamond at Duplaineville, WI and onwards to Chicago. The WSOR tracks head south towards Milwaukee and North then West towards Horicon WI. The WSOR turns from Horicon and Milwaukee meet at Ackerville swop trains and then the crews return to their origins. Both crews work the interchange before they turn.

The CN mainline is busy and the CN local interchanges cars here with the WSOR, they also use their passing siding to plan meets along their busy single track mainline.

Ok so hopefully if you are still reading you are thinking, this is very interesting so how did a guy from Manchester 4000miles from WI, 1) discover Ackerville and 2) want to model it!

The Inspiration

Rail fanning: Well in March 2016 I was lucky enough to be invited for a days railfanning with Dave Nelson a local modeller who I met online. We had been out railfanning around Milwaukee the previous year, my trip in March 2016 would include a trip to follow the CN mainline between Duplaineville WI and Fond-du-Lac WI. After shooting some shots of the local in Duplaineville we headed to Slinger Road, Ackerville to see if we could catch the WSOR local or some more CN traffic (both lines cross the road at the same point).

After a 20min wait we caught a CN train then head the WSOR local call the CN dispatcher and request permission to cross the CN main in Slinger WI, and we watched the WSOR local cross slinger road 5 minutes later. Dave suggested we head to Hwy 164 where there is a hwy overpass above the interchange. So we stood on the bridge at the side of the hwy and captured the following series of photographs. Note I am not condoning standing at the side of the Hwy its extremely dangerous we shouldn’t have done it but …..

I really enjoyed watching the railroad at work and the colour and variety of the WSOR locos nevermind the rolling stock was awesome. Ok so this is cool but an afternoon and 5 photos doesn’t complete the inspiration cake here.

NMRA AP: For my NMRA Achievement Program I need to build a layout to meet certain requirements, I have built layouts before but ther are not big enough for the NMRA requirements for the scales they are in. So lets look at those requirements for HO I need to build a layout of 32sqft or in N 18sqft that meets a merit award for scenery. I also need to lay track for HO 50 linear feet for N scale 25ft. Now it just so happens that the space i have to fit this in my vehicle is exactly 18sqft with 24″ of room for baseboard and a lighting rig above the layout.

Product Announcements: It is important if you want to model something based on the prototype and do it right you need to look at what you have available to you in terms of rolling stock. Structures you can scratchbuild but painting a loco in WSOR or CN scheme’s erm no thank you not in N scale!  So Atlas have announced both the G38-2 and the GP39-2 in WSOR livery, Scaletrains.com are going to produce the CN Gevo and looking at the samples of all three they are going to be excellent models in N scale and importantly with DCC/Sound installed 🙂

I also by way of a long story own some N scale rolling stock and a CN GP38-2 which is used by CN for the local.

Add the Gevo’s to the other CN locos on the market and we now have out of the box all the locos I need to make this model a reality.

So its game on!

The Plan

So we have 3ft x 6ft to fit the key components of Ackerville in, now despite being the Mid West we are lucky here that we have a perfect storm! we have two Hwy bridges to mask the entry to staging at either end of the scene! How awesome is that, its a the first thing you look for when your building a small layout how can I box this scene in and there is nothing better than two hwy overpasses.

So here is a Google earth Image of that we are looking to scale to 6ftx3ft. You can see Hwy 164 in the bottom right where the photographs above were shot, you can also see Slinger Road to the left crossing both main lines befor they head under Hwy 60.

Its going to need alot of compression but I will post a trackplan when I draft one out. As its going to be a full sceniced layout I am seeing a centre backdrop and so I will need some kind of scenic staging yard on the other side of the layout so I will now need more research for another location where the WSOR and the CN meeting elsewhere in Wisconsin.