Proto-Future and the Beginner's Guide to Model Railroading

In the premier episode of a new miniseries, I will take you through the history of North American railroads, before covering the major railroads in each region in later installments.

In this episode, I will be covering all the track-laying theories and topics required to successfully prepare for track laying.

Don’t forget to vote correctly!

Stay safe and healthy, everybody! Remember, being cooped up is an excellent time to get working on trains!

Hello all! It’s been a while! In this episode, we get around to finally starting construction by discussing all the ins and outs of constructing benchwork.

Wow, hi, you’re actually reading the episode notes. I never do that when I’m listening to podcasts. Whelp, here we are.

I want to formally apologize for taking waaaaaaaaaaay too long to put this episode together. Graduate school is a bitch. I honestly haven’t progressed on model railroading pretty much at all in the past six months. Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge kind of lost my interest; it was too simple, too short-lived, and too demanding to successfully recreate in my space allotted.

I’ve recently started looking into another railroad, the Altoona and Beech Creek (known by half-a-dozen names in its 30-year lifespan). It Is also a nearby narrow gauge railroad, and it also served a pseudo-tourist purpose, delivering them to a resort, overlook, and picnic ground on the top of a mountain (I am quite positive it is the shortest railroad to summit the Allegheny range), but it is different, and more optimal for two reasons. First, it continued past the resort to some coal mines, which add a lot more intrigue than a hilltop-resort-and-back passenger run, and second, it is shrouded in much more mystery, such that there is a good chance I will never be able to fully reconstruct a completely accurate track schematic. This would allow me much more flexibility to accommodate it to the space that I have available. No solid plan yet, but I’ll let you all know on the Patreon blog what happens as things develop.

Anyway, enjoy this episode. It’s one I should have done a long time ago, but I absolutely promise we will get to construction next time!

In this episode, I describe how to choose and research a prototype railroad. The most important take-home message I can give you is that you should never underestimate the value of some good in-person research at a historical society or university library.

The website I reference in the episode is thusly: https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=262:1:19084355468963::::: and contains a complete archive of all the USGS maps ever recorded. Just search by state and quadrat name, and you will get a downloadable list of the files for maps made of that area.

Also please visit the links page of the website, which has a new, very detailed section on resources prototype research.

In this episode, I answer my first listener questions! This is an important part of the show because it helps me to focus in on which subjects you still require clarification on. You can submit questions of your own through the contact page on www.bgtmrring.org. Hope to hear from you soon!

Nobody will ever be able to completely synthesize all the information you will need to build a successful track plan, but these episodes should hopefully give you a good primer. This episode will focus on layout design from a modeler perspective and in the context of a layout room. Other topics also covered are that of modeler personality, track planning software, and making a layout for your own interests.

Nobody will ever be able to completely synthesize all the information you will need to build a successful track plan, but these episodes should hopefully give you a good primer. This episode will focus on railroad operation, and the components there with associated, and the next episode will focus on space usage and design from the human perspective.