The Switchback
One of my favourite railway subjects is logging railways. Traversing rugged terrain with sharp curves, steep grades and precipitous ledges the little bush lokies struggled to haul the logs that were often larger than the locomotive itself from the bush to the mill.
Due to the fact that all the easy to get timber was logged or simply cleared for farming long before the timber industry in Australia took off, the remaining timber was in valleys or on mountains.
A variety of track arrangements allowed trains to reach the remaining stands of timber. This layout features one particular method, the switchback, or Zig-Zag.
Designed for On30, but at least one person is considering it for HOn3.
With the A frame loader, High lead, hayrack boom and log pond, it is closer to a US practise than Australian. Nonetheless, the trackplan is reasonably well thought out, I don't think I would change it at all if I was to build it myself. This trackplan requires two train trips to shunt both loading points. If a crew of two was present, one could shunt the sawmill whilst the other ran a train, swapping duties for each trip. Some sort of random selector that tells you which loader has done its job, and how many wagons are loaded, would give some operational interest.
For those who like automation, or are simply crazy, the hayrack boom could load logs from a stockpile onto the wagons, which would be good as it may be hard to reach the wagons to hand load them.
Modifications!
The Tin Goat (Ron Wm. Hurlbut) has kindly modified the plan thus:
Ron writes:
'instead of having to reach to the back corner for operating
the loading, I thought that it would be interesting to bring the
lumber camp forward for easy access
With this configuration, you could even add a hidden storage track for empties and loads behind a skyboard in the back corner.
And with the aid of the mirror, looking down into a valley gives a different viewing angle than looking up the side of a mountain...'
Ron is building a Free-MOn30 module featuring a
switchback. Ron's trackplan can be downloaded from:
http://www.vif.com/users/r-rhurlbut/HVS.pdf
While Free-MOn30 Module Standards are here:
http://www.vif.com/users/r-rhurlbut/On30-Modules/Free-MOn30
and the Free-MOn30 Yahoo Group can be found
here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-MOn30/
any comments?
Email me: trainbrain @ optusnet . com . au
(remove spaces from address before sending)
Mark Kendrick 10/10/05