Mike Schafer, ed. More Railroads You Can Model (1978)

     Mike Schafer, ed. More Railroads You Can Model (1978) Each chapter is adapted from an article in Model Trains or Model Railroader. The potted histories of the railway companies are useful, and often interesting. The plans based on them vary in quality. Several are simply too large, or too much in the spaghetti bowl tradition. The best ones concentrate on about three major features of the prototype, and maintain a low track-to-scenery ratio. E.g, a 9x11 L-shelf depicting the Graham County Railroad runs from Topton to Robbinsville, with a high curved trestle in the corner, scenic highlight of the layout, and a chance for the bridge builder in all of us to get out and have a ball. The plan is buildable in a reasonable amount of time, and a staging yard at one end would permit interchange of cars with the Southern. The plan is easily expandable. Draping the plan around the room would allow addition of a half-hidden Southern oval and versions of the GCRR’s Bear Creek (which had a sawmill) and Sweet Gum (flag stop in the middle of a North Carolina mountain valley).
     The 4x8 based on the Milwaukee Road’s “beer line” shows just how much track can be squeezed into that classic space, and how believable it is when it depicts an urban switching line. But the 5x9 version of the Ma & Pa doesn’t work; there’s too much track in too small a space. A round-the-walls version would work better, and it doesn’t take much to visualise one. * to *** (2003)