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50 years of loving trains

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Welcome to My Model Railroad,
the Utopia Northern RR.

My model railroad is the current reincarnation of the HO layout
I named the Utopia Northern Railroad. It is loosely based on the Rock Point and Coast RR that appeared in print in 1981 in Track Planning Ideas from Model Railroader (Model Railroad Handbook No. 15).

Here is a schematic of the current layout (December, 2009). This was drawn by Martin Alborough, one of my Wednesday night operators and a fellow member of the Nottawasaga Model Railroad Club (NMRC).

UNRR track diagram.
The narrow gauge switchback from
Collingswoods towards North Point is not shown.

The original layout was designed by a Robert J. Lutz. It was a point-to-point layout with a common turntable serving both ends of the system. The two major towns are separated by a central divider. I have kept his convention by calling my two cities South Point and North Point.

*City of North Point*

My model railroad has the other end of the run terminating at South Point. North Point and South Point share a common backdrop divider. The cities share a common turntable that is located in South Point and is reached by a track passing through Five Star Manufacturing.

City of South Point

My old Wilson metal turntable bumps and grinds at South Point. The track passes between the roundhouses to enter through the backdrop at Consolidated Paper and exits at Five Star Manufacturing. The roundhouses are Suydam kits. The 3-dimensional building flats were freelanced using parts from Design Preservation Models.

Below is a photo of Five Star Manufacturing at North Point with the siding that passes through the backdrop to the turntable at South Point. It is not used during operating sessions except in an emergency to pass locomotives to the other terminal.

Five Star Manufacturing
at North Point

Lots of action in a 30' x 20' layout room

*South Point City Center*

The Utopia Northern also loops around the walls and has a central peninsula for the two cities that back onto each other.

A major difference from the original design is that the Utopia Northern has a level underneath the cities that I call Underhill South and Underhill North. The hidden staging yard is in the center of the run between the two cities at Underhill North. There is also a return loop that will take you from Underhill North to Fort Eerie and back to Underhill North.

*Underhill North staging yard*

*Swing gate entrance to layout*

The entrance to the layout is through a swinging gate. Tracks cross the gap on two levels. A slow order keeps trains at a crawl. Thus far there are signals at both ends but no electrical cut-out to warn if the tracks are not aligned. This is on the "to do" list for 2010. Operators need to be careful to inspect the alignment before crossing. Nothing has hit the floor, yet!

The major division point is at Utopia.

Past the swing gate, between Underhill North and South Point, is another major town called Utopia. This now connects to East Utopia which is the interchange yard for all cars moving back and forth between Canada. East Utopia has been designed to free-mo standards and is on castors to faciliate access to a storage closet. Cars for Canadian Pacific go to the front side, cars for Canadian National connections go to the rear side. The center tracks are for interchange. There is a wye between East Utopia and Mintwood. All classification and blocking is done at Utopia. The yard at Utopia was revised in November, 2009 to accommodate this. Cars for South Point from Endaline must go to Utopia to be back-hauled on other trains. Cars from North Point and Underhill South and North also must go to Utopia and be back-hauled to Mintwood and Port Feron. There's no runaround track at Mintwood. Port Feron is a small dual-guage yard. While there is a runaround track it will only accommodate one car or locomotive. This all makes for some challenging action. We have been operating all freights as extras. In December, 2009 we introduced several passenger trains, a coal drag and a through freight on schedules. The fast clock operates at 4:1 ratio (one hour of scale time to 15 minutes of real time). The operators must clear the main at specific times so as not to delay the higher class trains.

*Two Atlas RS-3 engines idling in Utopia Yard*

Parts of these bolted together semi-modules are 30 years old. They contain everything but the kitchen sink. Codes 100, 83, 70 and 55. Brass and nickel silver rail. Shinohara, Peco, Atlas and handmade turnouts, manual throws, snap-action twin coil switch machines of various vintage, and a collection of buildings from scratchbuilt to kits and kitbashes. This is a favorite industrial switching area that can keep operators busy all night. Plus mainline trains have to pass through in both directions because Utopia is the centerpiece of the railroad.

I describe the sound installations in the DCC section. To see how I installed a sound decoder in an older Atlas RS3, review Atlas RS-3 sound installation. Decoder installations in older engines with narrow bodies can be quite a challenge.

*East Utopia Jct to the free-mo module*

The track from the left takes you to Utopia East. I have more photos and an explanation of the free-mo concept on another page.

There is a wye junction between Utopia East, Mintwood and Underhill North. This area is wired and connected to the main layout with trailer hitch plugs.

Two 1" dowels are used to line it up. Ballasting and scenery have been started (October, 2009)

*Blueshores Harbor*

Traveling in the opposite direction, Utopia West continues past Blueshores Harbor and on through Valleyview to Youngstown and Endaline.

Norm's Landing and the associated buildings are Campbell kits I built in the 70s. So is Tuckahoe Produce on the nearside of the double-tracked mainline here.

I enjoy building wood kits and there are many Campbell buildings and half a dozen Finescale kits.

I lead you through the construction of a wood and paper kit on my kit building page where I tackle CP Station #9 by Kanamodel Products.

*Valleyview engine service*

The coal tower and water tank see limited service at Valleyview now that diesels rule the road. At least until Paul Bailey, one of my Wednesday night operators and another member of our NMRC club, started bringing in his now sound-equipped steamers. Paul's conversions and decoder installations can be found on my electrical pages for DCC. he has encouraged me to get my Proto 2000 0-8-0s out of the box. These are now equipped with Lok-Sound decoders. I am slowly upgrading all my steam engines (though not all with get sound) and the coaling towers and water plugs are back in use. The coal track at Valleyview now doubles for switching the ferry lead.

*Ferry track lead*

The ferry hasn't been built. The idea is to build it as a cabinet on rollers. Cars will be "fiddled" into storage drawers. Another project on the never-ending list! The tracks at the edge of the benchwork are now buried in pavement and a road has been installed to the pier at Blueshores.

*Big Hill Jct.*

From Youngstown there is a loop that will also take you down to Underhill South at Big Hill Junction. There are some maintenance-of-way sheds just before the intersection. The Big Hill is the helix that climbs to the higher level. The helix track is partially open, ie, tracks don't climb directly above each other at all times. These were sections saved from an earlier layout and spliced together.

*Underhill South*

Underhill South is a semi-fiddle destination. Imaginary industries reside here but there is no room for them. As the tracks enter a tunnel, cars are spotted on the open tracks on the assumption that the industries are just out of sight. Underhill South is directly below South Point. Underhill North is directly below North Point. The hidden staging has 4 tracks and the hidden yard has 5 stub-ended sidings for storage.

*Mainline to Valleyview from South Point*

Here a Canadian National (CN) local is climbing the 2% cliff-hugging grade from Valleyview to South Point.

The local has just exited Tunnel 5 after crossing the Trout River on a deck girder bridge (the one in the middle of the picture below). The high steel trestle is beyond Buffalo Peak.

*Bridges over Trout River*

Trout River at Milepost 27 has some excellent fishing. Local fishermen hang out below the rapids.

*Fishermen at Trout River*

The big hill starts at Underhill South and climbs via a helix to Buffalo Peak. The helix is not a true helix in that tracks are not always directly above each other. Stretches of the helix are exposed. Trains appear briefly between tunnels.

*Tunnel 2*

The big hill is a semi-enclosed helix where trains duck in and out of tunnels. Two of them are seen here. LogicRail signal circuits control access. At the top of the Big Hill helix is Buffalo Peak Station.
Buffalo peak is a flag stop during the week with a short siding for an RDC and a boxcar from time to time. On the weekend visitors come here for recreation: hiking in the summer, skiing in the winter. At least, that's what the Operating Schedule is set up for.

The backdrop and surrounding scenery at Buffalo Peak are waiting to be completed.

*Buffalo Peak Station*

Past Buffalo Peak, trains continue to Summit Siding, the only passing track between Underhill South and High Bridge Jct. At the junction trains either continue on to North Point or descend to Shaneville Jct which is at the top of the grade down to Underhill North.

To further complicate operations, the remnants of my HON3 dual gauge layout runs as a switchback between Port Feron, Shaneville and High Bridge Jct. The junction is just to the left of the swinging gate to the layout shown earlier.

*Shaneville bridge*

Shaneville is a transfer point between the Utopia Northern standard gauge railroad and its narrow gauge division. The right-of-way is dual-gauge track down to Port Feron. The HON3 narrow gauge also climbs a switchback to High Bridge Jct., then part way to North Point. It splits off just past the wooden Warren truss bridge. This section has survived three moves. It can be broken in the middle, unfortunately through a river. The river has to be redone. The overall length of this section is 16 feet. There are relays wired to all the frogs and the turnouts are hand-thown. Everytime I move I have to reconnect all the wiring. I swear I will never move again.

*Beebe narrow gauge station*

This section is based on a plan from an old track planning book by Kalmbach Books. It is based on a shelf-style switchback plan, the Port Ogden and Northern RR, that appeared in 101 Track Plans for Model Railroaders, by Linn Westcott, Kalmbach Books, 1956.

Originally narrow gauge loops continued from both ends to form a dog bone layout. Now they don't go anywhere. I may rebuild this section in Code 83 and scrap the narrow gauge or minimize it. I have some room at the left end to do something and a wonderful station waiting for a home. I built this station years ago. I believe it is based on a station on the East Broad Top or Rangeley Lakes. The track runs through the station so passengers can board in inclement weather. I called it Beebe after a town in the Eastern Townships of Quebec province.

What projects still need to be done?

The engineering department hasn't decided how to extricate itself from the mess that has been created by keeping the previous parts of the layout. I've held onto the Shaneville section because I really like it. Which brings me to another key point. Because parts of my Utopia Northern are more than 30 years old, there are all kinds of different track and turnouts.

I started with Code 100 so a lot of it is still that way
Shaneville is all Code 70 dual gauge with some bits of HON3 wandering off to Port Feron and elsewhere
Utopia is a mixture of Code 100, 83, 70 and 55
Utopia East, the free-mo section, is all Code 83 handlaid with FastTrack turnouts, as is the extension being built at Underhill North
Turnouts include Shinohara, many of which have been reworked to be DCC-compatible, PECO, Atlas and now Fast Track

As of January, 2010, scenery is about 85% complete. It is mostly detail work that needs to be done and some of the scenery needs to be freshened and improved. South Point city has yet to be completed. The streets have now been paved! I haven't finalized building placement. Most of the lighting has been hooked up. This work started before Christmas, 2009. I'm using an old power supply that I built for DC use. I think I got the design from one of Mallery's electrical books. It is built around a Variac AC controller instead of a rheostat. The 110 AC current is dropped to 16VAC and is converted to DC by a diode bridge rectifier after passing through the Variac. This gives smoother control than a rheostat. I think the idea is to avoid the back emf problem that one encounters on grades, especially going down hill. Anyway, I stripped out the direction switches and use the raw power to drive the city lights. These are already soaking up more tan 2 amps.

I discuss these lighting projects on my lighting effects page.

Trackwork is undergoing some renovations and upgrading. Open staging was built during the summer at Fort Eerie using Fast Track templates for the #6 and curved turnouts. Utopia Yard was also redone in the autumn to improve operations.

*Fort Eerie open staging yard*

Working with Fast Track templates to make your own trackwork is easy and saves money.

Electrical work is ongoing. The signal system is only partially complete. Bill Payne and I are experimenting with building some circuits based on plans we found on the Internet. Check out my electrical pages. We will be constructing detection cicuits in 2010. We have already made and tested some 3-light circuits. As of January, 2010 we have gathered most of the parts we'll need to construct and test DCC-compatible detection circuits that work independently from the track power.

Some of the turnouts still need their frogs wired to the relays. The new Fast Track turnouts have dead frogs, but all my engines seem to get across them without additional wiring being added to power the frogs. In November I added Fast Track hex juicers to all the slip switches. These power a frog with only one wire! Worth checking out. I'll add more once my budget allows it.

Most of the attention in the past few months has been on initiating car card operations.

Oh yes. After my operators leave on Wednesday evening I'm handed a list of maintenance complaints that need to be addressed before the next operating session. Usually just coupler adjustments, dirty wheels, track repair, and the odd wonky switch machine or broken throwbar. The typical chores all model railroaders face.

I also have shelves loaded with kits to be built, engines to be repaired or reworked for DCC, and a host of electronic projects and other detailing and weathering jobs. I hope to get them done before my eyes give out or my hands shake too much. We're having fun, that's the main thing.

The most recent addition to structures is a Campbell kit at Port Feron. Read my summary of building King's Cannery including some tips and techniques.