Starting the Passenger Terminal

I love passenger trains.  They always have fascinated me, perhaps because they embody my obsession with architecture.  Passenger trains are moving architecture, with their spaces, functions and images very carefully crafted by their designers and the railroads who ran them.  More than a means of moving people around the country, passenger trains embodied a railroad's brand - the image, sentiment and experience it wanted to show to the public and their business prospects.  Even through their decline and demise in the 1960s, many railroads maintained their passenger trains as the standard they set for the traveling and shipping public.

Modeling passenger operations is no light matter.  For one thing, the size and diversity of equipment takes ample means to support it, both in space and money.  Passenger terminals, if they are to be modeled properly, take a lot of room on even a large layout.  More importantly, passenger operations are extremely complex and require substantial knowledge and research to support them realistically.  Not only do passenger terminals handle passengers (through, local) with a variety of accommodation (coach, sleeper, fine dining, economy meals, cocktail lounging), they also carry mail and freight.  Each of these functions is a special operation with its own equipment, facilities, crew and schedules.

Modeling passenger operations is the art of scaling things down.  The constraints of any layout (space, access, running) force the modeler to make compromises, and the key is to balance realism with the limited space available to access, run and maintain it.  Passenger stations ideally should be on straight track at least 20' long to accommodate name trains on Class 1 roads, which is a rare commodity on most layouts.  Add to that extra tracks for mail loading, express terminals (both standard and refrigerated), coach yard and commissary and the demands for space quickly add up. Only through selective compression can all of these facilities and their operations fit into a layout.

The Overland Terminal Tackles the Space Challenge

The Overland Terminal layout takes on this challenge by centering the terminal in a larger Western city busy with local freight switching.  It took a tremendous amount of research, planning, sketching and mock-ups to determine the merits and feasibility of this concept.  It was a series of compromises built around the decision to make the passenger terminal the ONLY mainline operation on the layout.  The main level is a busy city with a number of local freight switching operations around the passenger terminal. 

The 475' mainline run on the layout, though respectable, only makes sense as a staging operation for routing mainline trains through the terminal. Mainline freight serves only to keep the mainline busy, and there are no classification yards or transfer terminals to support it.  Furthermore, there are no engine facilities, roundhouses, turntables or any of the usual suspects one finds on a motive power-centered layout.  None of these scenes or operations have ever interested me, so why build them just because practically every other layout has them? Instead, the yard directly below the passenger terminal serves only to stage local freights and mainline passenger trains.

With multiple urban industries and warehouses driving the switching operations, the layout can compress a lot of activity in its space.  These urban industries also balance the passenger terminal with enough visual and operational interest to satisfy most ground-level operating scenarios.  With its two levels, the concept is evolving into a city center (on the main level) and a coast and seaport on the lower level, the Overland Terminal Railway controls the trackage rights, freight and passenger operations between these two levels.

Fitting a Passenger Terminal Operation onto a Layout

The terminal proper fits in a space of 30" x 32' along the west wall of the layout. While this space can hold a full terminal in its length, it is not nearly large enough to handle a 20-track terminal operation.  Accordingly, the ladder in the terminal was condensed to 4 tracks, as shown here:

Using #8 Peco switches to provide the most realistic departure angles for passenger cars, the four dedicated passenger tracks are spaced to provide two passenger loading platforms.  Space required scaling down the ladder to these 4 tracks in order to leave room for the modeling the terminal buildings.

Because a passenger terminal must handle multiple operations in its ladder (coach/sleeper/food set-outs and add-ins, mail and express), the tracks closest to the terminal are reserved for mail and express switching, while trains with set-outs or add-ins are on the middle tracks, and through trains are on the outer tracks closest to the mainline.  All of these operations are condensed in my terminal.

Here a borrowed Walthers ATSF depot serves as a planning landmark for placement and profile of the station.  Using stand-ins for structures is invaluable for building a scene in a layout, since it shows the ways in which operations will be viewed.  Too often layouts are built with a singular emphasis on track, and structures and the scenes that actually require the track are an afterthought.  And the difference between layouts planned around track and built around scenes is obvious no matter how much work goes into one.  The latter I call an architectural approach, whereby the track and trains are inhabitants in a scene.

Postal Terminal

My plan is for all of the key terminals to be placed in front of the tracks with all of the buildings super-detailed inside and out to show how the trains appear from the station.  Keeping the buildings with a low profile ensures easier access to the tracks for viewing and operation at ground level.  Situating station structures in front of the tracks and at the edge of the layout also forces the modeler to create spectacular detail in the structures; otherwise, they are just a distraction from the operation.  Track 1, closest to the station, is exclusively for mail and express switching, and it has extensions on both ends for their respective terminals.

Track 1 extends to the south beyond the ladder, as shown here with RPO (Railway Post Office) and mail storage cars in place, for the Postal Terminal.  Both storage and working mail are handled at the Postal Terminal, and the switching operation has to manage the difference.  Working mail, which is in the RPO, requires specialized switching moves to handle exchange of mail between different trains.  Typically this operation involves spotting RPOs opposite each other on the platform so that the postal workers can transfer parcels and sacks of mail over the shortest distance.  Storage mail, which is being transferred between terminals on the route, is loaded directly at the terminal.  Track and terminal placement has to reflect these operations.

Railway Express Agency Terminal

On the north end, the ladder extends into several tracks for the Railway Express Agency (REA) terminal.  Since REA operations are fascinating in their own right, the extended tracks include loading on both sides of the terminal for both standard and refrigerated freight, along with a third track that serves as the escape track for dedicated switchers.  At least one track will extend to the limits of the property to serve a dedicated icing platform for REA traffic, as shown here:

The REA Terminal, looking south, has tracks on both sides, the one on the right to be buried in the pavement of the truck yard, while the left-hand track will serve as the primary loading track for the freight dock.  Because I have a fascination with express operations and equipment, the Express Terminal is a prominent feature of the layout.  Now long gone (REA disappeared from the American landscape in 1975), the Railway Express Agency is worth modeling in its own right.  Being an historian, express operations are inherently appealing because they require research and historical knowledge to model, rather than simple enthusiasm.  

The Evolution of a Concept

From its initial conceptualization over two years ago, the layout has evolved completely from a Utah-based UP/SP operation into a Southern California urban and coastal setting.  There are several reasons for this seismic change in concept:  

The bench work and track plan: The first is in the layout's construction.  Although a good design on paper, the layout as built has a dramatically different feel from Utah railroading in its level space and overall flow.  Rather than force the layout-as-built to fit a concept that in no way resembles it, I've surrendered to the layout's construction to guide me on its completion.  A local modeler, Mike Rohman, describes this phenomenon as 'the layout speaking to you.'  George Sellios, whose work has long been my barometer for model railroading, has said that he does not plan anything on his layout, instead letting the modeling guide its path.  

Both observations are spot-on for me, and they are incredibly liberating as a modeler.  My fantasy layout has always been something freelanced along the West Coast that allows my favorite roads, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, to work a city and harbor.  Fascinated by Utah mainline railroading, I moved here with the intention of being close to the prototype.  Now that I'm here and having had the chance to see so many local layouts I realized that everyone else here already has done that.  So why do another version of most every other layout in the state?  Unconsciously, my layout kept me honest to my lifelong fantasy concept of a coastal operation in California.  

Evolving from modeling to operations: As I have had more exposure to other layouts and the experiences of their builders, my thinking is evolving at an explosive rate.  I confess right here that I am an architectural modeler of historical places.  I always have been and always will be.  This disciplined architectural historian in me was compelled to research and learn railroad equipment, history and operations.  These have enhanced my modeling immeasurably and have forced me to develop and implement specific operations and an operating concept into the layout.  Most interesting to me are passenger and urban freight switching.  Accordingly, everything on the layout is built to support these two operations.

The mainline, though respectable at 475', has evolved into both a feeder of the switching operations I want to model and part of the scenery.  Accordingly, the mainline is pushed back as far as it can go in order for its presence to be known but not dominating.  Its primary function is to feed passenger trains needing switching to the terminal and local freights for the industries to be switched.