Extra 708 West departs Milton, UT and rolls west over Grease-
wood Trestle through typical northern Great Basin surround-
ings on Rob Spangler’s HO Western Pacific layout.
Rob says of this photo, “This location is tough to photograph be-
cause of the limited available angles that don’t show where the
backdrop curves out of the scene, plus there are shadows be-
hind the trestle that are hard to avoid because of how close the
backdrop is. They disappear into the trees if no train is present.”
Rob showed how he built this trestle scene
Rob is a frequent poster on the MRH site
and we hope to see him do some articles for us on his scen-
ery construction techniques. In the meantime, make sure and
check out
Texas South East number 3 spots cars at Sabine Brass & Copper.
This is Len Turner’s Texas South East Railroad, a freelance HO
scale urban industrial switching layout set in the early 1950’s.
Len says, “I based design and construction of the TSE on Lance
Mindheim’s series of books on small switching layouts [Even
though Lance’s examples show contemporary railroading,
here’s a superb instance of applying Lance’s design principles
to layouts set in the transition era.
– MRH
].
I designed the track plan for industrial switching operations
with a full loop main as the switching lead. I designed the TSE
to be simple with straight forward switching – no switching
puzzles or ‘Time-Savers’ and so on. The plan includes a three
track staging yard and a full loop with two runarounds. The
track plan will continue to evolve as I get further into construc-
tion of the layout. I used mostly Micro Engineering code 70
Flex track and ME code 70 #6 turnouts. For the yard trackwork,
I used Atlas code 83 with #4 and #6 turnouts. My minimum
curve radius is 24”. For more on the TSE,
.
Yes, it’s a model - 3
MRH-Jan 2013
