P1001441 Rawlins W TD1
More of our Rawlins. The last row house has a great view of the fragrant stockyards across the tracks from the scratch built station.
The hinged doors below the fascia cover a wire channel for this upper deck of the mushroom benches. It goes all around the layout, and holds the track wiring, signal wiring and control components (a tiny circuit board about 1 x 2" for each track electrical block). The rear wall of these ducts is the back of the lower level's back-drop that curves up and toward the front of the rear bench fronts.
The wire duct for the lower level has a square cross section and is built of 3/4" dimensional lumber in a box just below the edge of the lower benches. My design drawing of the mushroom design with wire ducts is shown in the next image.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:38 AM•Views: 57
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Wyo Div Mushroom Bench Cross Section
This is a cross section of the two level free standing mushroom benches. the upper level is worked from a 17" high riser which runs continuously all around the entire upper level. A step up is shown, but the only way up onto the riser is by an 8' long ramp in line with the aisle, which is safer than steps.
The lower level is worked from the building concrete floor. The concrete contractor promised to make it uniformly level over the whole 25x50 foot area, and he delivered. This made it easier to lay the tracks with the design model grades, which are proportional to the UP prototype. The model grades are 1.29 x prototype grade. I got the prototype grades from a sheath of profile charts of UP from Cheyenne to Ogden.
A free standing mushroom is a great design, but it does take a lot of room, because there are no benches attached to the walls. With this design there are aisles next to every wall, and those aisles might be better used for benches and track. The Wyoming Division is in a 50 x 75 foot steel building especially built for the layout. The two outside aisles are only 2 of 9 aisles with 8 benches in between. If benches were on the walls we could have had 9 benches, but upper and lower operators would have to share at least the 2 outer aisles. So we lost only 1/9 of our benches by being free standing.
Upload Date: Nov 4, 2022 06:26 PM•Views: 58
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P1001440 Rawlins TD1
This is part of Rawlins west of the Sinclair Refinery. We also have a Model of Cheyenne's Frontier Refinery, which built with government financing. My pipefitter dad helped build it starting in 1942 when I was a baby. It was believed that Japan could not bomb Cheyenne which is 1,200 miles from the Pacific.
After the refinery went into wartime production of high octane aviation fuel, mom and dad bought a house in Cheyenne and we lived there (brrrrr!) till I started high school when I was just barely 14 in Long Beach California (trading the bad 50's smog for blizzards).
Lenny Made a terrific model of the Rawlins freight house with his 3D printer. He detailed it inside including lights.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:38 AM•Views: 56
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P1001439 Sinclair TD1 per sheet
Sinclair Refinery just East of Rawlins WY. Rawlins is one of the minor yards on the layout. Evanston on the lower level is one of the three others (Echo, Utah, and Hanna are the other two.)
I usually work Rawlins, Echo and Evanston, in one full day operating session. The hard part is clearing the mains when through trains pass though. Like all model yards some of the yard work requires using the mains or at least crossing over them. We ease that crowding by having an alternate or third main through that yard or designing the tracks so that the yard is clearly separated from the mains, as in Hanna. Working all three yards in one day should be done by floating back and forth between them. I do some or all of Echo, and then float between Evanston and Rawlins, so I can keep both yards cleared out for the two locals that must switch them on their runs, each of which are 1/2 of the layout long.
If one of those yards gets overcrowded with cars, I make up a train, and in prototype railroad fashion move those cars to the next yards they are to go to, and make them someone else's problem.
With my car forwarding system all YM's are empowered to act as local agents and send any car to its next place, as long as it is a logical move (pretending only that he got a call for an MT car for that spot. Confusing? No, it is more prototypical than 4 cycle cards repeating endlessly.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:36 AM•Views: 63
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P1001438 Sinclair Warehouse TD1 per sheet
The Supply warehouse of the Sinclair refinery just east of Rawlins. This view is two benches east of the Wamsutter bench. The refinery is completely on the backdrop, except for the loading platform.
The clear plastic tabs are to hold a clear plastic shield to protect the signal from damage by an operator's arm. I remove the shields to take pictures.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:35 AM•Views: 64
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P1001452 Curve W of Hanna TD! per Sht
Leaving Rawlins heading east the double mains curve on the inside of the endcap that joins this bench and the one further east of Rawlins. On the joining endcap of these two benches is the Hanna mine complex, hidden by a clever rock wall from the tracks laid on the prairie. The stub track is the small Rawlins yard's tail track..
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:48 AM•Views: 59
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P1001451 Hanna fromS TD1 per sht
This is the Hanna coal mining complex on the endcap of two joining benches. The curving two mains from the last picture near the top left as they finish their 180 degree turn onto the next bench leaving Rawlins are barely visible coming out from behind the rock cut (see the the last photo). Part of the Laramie yard can be seen on the other side of the aisle between this bench and Laramie's.
Just above the center of this photo is the underpass from the 4 track coal marshaling yard of Hanna, WY.
I was in CA when Allen called me and hesitantly suggested the design of this 4 x 8 ft mine scene. We agreed that it could almost be a 4 x 8 foot HO layout. I trusted him and readily agreed to it. "After all," I said, "We have everything else, why not have a 4 x 8 layout?"
The 4 track mine yard on the far left is shown in the next photo. It is at the lower end of this spiraled track that goes under the far wooden trestle. The winding near part of this spiraled stub track goes to each of the area's different parts. Loaded hoppers from Mine #3 on the right wind down the grade past the supply/#1 Mine Building with a single stub track for unloading supplies and loading coal. Further down the grade another stub track serves Mine #2, and the main stub continues under the wooden trestle and on to the Hanna Coal marshaling yard on the next bench shown in the next photo..
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:46 AM•Views: 62
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P1001450Hanna Bridge TD1 per sht
The steel girder bridge over the gully in the coal mining region of Hanna. Three of the real mines are modeled here.
I also used the Luminar 4 Sky Replacement function on this photo, and the result is shown in the following picture.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:46 AM•Views: 61
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P1001450Hanna Bridge TD1 per sht SR
I used the Sky Replacement tool of the Luminar 4 post processing program to replace the fluorescent fixtures, sprinkler pipes and walls and inner side of the steel building roof.
Luminar replaces only sky that starts at the top of the image, so I had to fool it by "painting" clouds and sky over the building parts down to the sky existing in the original image. The "painting" was done using the program's Clone and Stamp tool to copy one circular area of the cloudy sky and paste it over another area to be sky. The part picked to be copied elsewhere does not matter as long as it is sky, and the cloned and stamped intermediate result usually may have repeating cloud/sky patterns which really stand out. But for an intermediate step to fool Luminar that id OK, because when the Sky Replacement function is called and finished, all sky/clouds will be replaced with a entirely new sky from the program library. That step takes only a second or two which allows you to try many different skies in its library or some of your own you have shot and saved to it.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:46 AM•Views: 57
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P1001454 Hanna Yard and station TD1 per sht
The Hanna Depot and the town on the backdrop. The two track near the Depot are Tracks 1 and 2, the W and S mains The nearby tracks are the 18 foot long Coal marshaling yard.The background scenes are from real photos of Wyoming captured from the Web. They are artfully stitched together into three long continuous strips that lines all of the backdrops for the upper and the lower layers. There is one 10 or 12 foot gap around the Dale Junction on Sherman Hill to allow access to the tracks there in case of a derailment, and that counts for two strips. The third is the continuous one around nearly all of the lower level, except for the 25 feet or so of Ogden which is hand painted. (Bad mistake. The high school art teacher we hired slopped more paint on the floor and our shop than on the backdrop, and he did not clean his brushes or the sink. I fired him the next day.)
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:51 AM•Views: 61
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P1001456 Hanna E Side houses Overpass TD1 sht
Hanna Coal Yard and employee houses and sheds, and a truck less boxcar for storage. The big house is for the Hanna superintendent. There are 3 RS-3 diesels to head the completed coal train for delivery to all the UP coal bins and coal retailers on the entire upper level in two runs, E and W. These coal drags are for complete trains of as many as 35 cars east through Cheyenne. They do a second run of up to 7 loaded hoppers west bound through Rawlins.
In the distance is the diesel Chicago and NW mine switch engine and the road caboose--it is 1957!
Also shown is the Hanna stock yard and the US 30 Hwy overpass.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:51 AM•Views: 62
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P1001457 US30 Overpass E of Hanna TD1 CropRot
Looking back west toward Hanna. Lenny and Allen made a great many wooden snow fences scattered around the layout. And here is the ore-Interstate Highway US 30.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:52 AM•Views: 61
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P1001458 Hanna to Med Bow TD1
The next scene east from Hanna is Medicine Bow WY. Here we have Conoco Oil, W F Shields Warehouse, Hanna Supply and Lumber and the Stock Yard.
Across the tracks and the 2 lane US 30 is the historic Virginian Hotel where Owen Wister wrote The novel "The Virginian," which made the hotel equally historic. "The Virginian" was the first full length western novel. Nearly all succeeding novels, movies and TV shows follow the patterns and conventions Mr. Wister set down in his book.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:56 AM•Views: 59
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P1001521 lookTD1 per sheet
The Hanna coal yard is on the far end of the right hand bench, and on the other side of the US 30 highway overpass is Medicine Bow, WY.
The Laramie River is next and then is the Laramie yard. The wide gap between the two tracks next to the two mains is for the 6 foot long icing platform. We run a lot of Special class trains of all PFE cars, and Laramie is on of the major icing stations. Our era is harvest time on the west coast in 1957. This explains the yellowing late summer grass on our prairies, and several PFE Specials a session, plus 4 "City" passenger trains each direction (Cities of LA, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Portland) makes operations more challenging for all other trains, because they have to watch for all of them, the PFE's and the City trains, and yield to them.
Lenny has 3D printed a fine depot for Laramie, but it had not been set in place when this photo was taken.
Capture Date: Oct 24, 2022 09:58 AM•Views: 59
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P1001427 Lar Hanna RD1
This is taken with me standing on the west steps to the mezzanine. The east steps can be seen about 73 feet away. The Laramie yard bench is on the left. On the right bench near the camera is Medicine Bow, and Hanna, WY is in the distance. Hanna was one of the huge coal mining areas across southern Wyoming. Medicine Bow was the center of the 1800's Sheep herding. The Red roof is The Virginian Hotel where Owen Wooster wrote the 1st book length western novel ("When you call me that, smile.")
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:23 AM•Views: 59
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