Space

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Space ] [ Requirements ] [ Layout Progress ] [ Operations ] [ Superelevation ] [ DCC ]

Space

As I said, the room is 26 x 60, to the outside foundation wall, so maybe 24 x 58 is closer, with the energy walls against the block walls.

As a two-level layout, the top and bottom "footprints" are almost identical.   The walk-out doorway is on the "top" wall.  The stairs and furnace are near the lower middle of the room.

Lower Level

This is the lower level, and features a line from the Duluth docks (lower left corner), counter-clockwise to Proctor, then heading "north" through Saginaw, Burnett and past Federal Bentonite (I got confused with the order), then curving into the center of the room to Iron Junction.  At Iron, the helix is on the line to Wolf.  The other line to Biwabik drops under the helix and comes out on the other side of Iron Jct. and continues past Spruce and Sparta, and into Biwabik. 

There is a scenic divider on the peninsula between the line to Iron and the line to Biwabik.

The line to Two Harbors is storage tracks behind the ore dock, and runs through as Missabe Junction in Duluth.  Thus, trains to Missabe Junction will re-appear as coming from Two Harbors into Biwabik, and vice versa.

Upper Level

This is the upper level, and begins from Wolf with a line running to Hibbing, and a line running to Virginia.  There are no scenic dividers.  The track through Sherwood and Shelton serves double duty as the DW&P track (Shelton) and the Missabe's line to Buhl.

The wye at Wilpen runs behind the town of Virginia to Fraser yard, shared back-to-back with the Rust Crusher yards of Hibbing.

Although possible, continuous running on this layout makes no logical sense, as trains on the Missabe didn't generally run from one end to the other.