Model Railroading
Birmingham Yesterday movie of railroad action at a blast furnace. This is a 30 meg file (.mpg), but you can browse while it downloads.
Birmingham 1950 (Copyright Carstens Publications, Inc., 2003; used by permission) is an article from Railroad Model Craftsman Magazine. Special thanks to RMC Editor Bill Schaumburg. Enjoy!
The 2004 Southeast Region Convention of the National Model Railroad Association was a great success over Memorial Day weekend. Check it out.
Birmingham Area Model Train Show, Bessemer Civic Center, October 18, 2003. Lots of local model RR activity and good folks. Check it out.
There are two model railroads that you can visit in Birmingham (2003). Both are located at The Mall at Westlake, in Bessemer, AL. One is the Magic City Railroad Club, and they are usually open, in the mall, Saturdays from 10 am to about 3 pm. These folks operate 3 rail O guage trains, including the Lionel trains that were popular in the 1950's. But, a lot has changed in terms of technology for the newer equipment.
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Model railroading is fun. That's the slogan of Model Railroader magazine, and it sums it all up pretty well. Birmingham offers a lot to excite and challenge anyone interested in railroads of any size. The large map that is included in this web site was a great way to begin to look for sites to model. Field trips confirmed the areas chosen and additional information was gathered. |
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At my house, we carefully selected a basement with a house over it, and set out planning a railroad empire that would reflect some of the scenes around Birmingham. Although the railroad is not complete by any means, and scenery is sorely lacking, the basic concept and thought have developed a series of locations on the model that reflect real life. |
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One of the areas modeled is the Sloss Furnace area. The key features here are the long straight track of the main lines and the complex track of the crossing that is made by the L & N and the Southern main lines. All of this is still in place and is still very busy. Here are some scenes from the current status of the railroad empire, unfinished as it is. The "stoves", the towers with the rounded tops, are made of shampoo bottles, and the "blast furnace" is a stadium cup and a cooking oil bottle. The rest of the mock up is foam core. |
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One approach that I have taken is to make mock up buildings without much detail in order to take up space and provide a backdrop. These are made from foam core board, such as the casting shed at Sloss Furnace and the overpass. Other items such as mailing tube and cardboard from the backs of legal pads make pretty good building materials.
I did go to the trouble to build continuous (almost) backdrops with coved (curved) corners and painted them with sky colors, diluted and blended with a six inch brush. These are made of Masonite, eighth inch thick and are coved to about 15 inches in the corners of the basement.
The overall format of the railroad is around the walls and through the walls. There is a lift bridge over the stairway into the basement/garage. The "through" the wall is a pair of tunnels through the stairwell wall. One goes to the Sloss Furnace area and beyond. The other goes to a 21' x 4.5' room under the front porch which is intended to contain a long "mountain" representing Red Mountain. This will contain an iron mine on one end, and through a warp in the space time continuum a coal mine at the other end. Under the mountain is a hidden staging yard and return loop.
At the other "end" of the railroad, there is
a 16' x 1' shelf with another 16' x 1' fold down shelf that drops down to make
room for my wife's mini van. ROW negotiations reached an impasse and this
was the best compromise I could reach. The wall portion is set up to mimic
the elevated downtown track, with retaining walls, and the L & N station
platforms on top. About half the length is intended to be fronted with
building flats to hide the last half of the tracks, which can then form a dead
end staging yard on an upper level. Underneath this is a lower level dead
end staging yard.
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The photos above show the nature of the grade separation with the underpasses and retaining walls. There are three 1920's vintage viaducts in this area, and the second photo shows the 22nd Street viaduct. Almost all of the buildings in this view date from before 1930. The third photo shows the elevated passenger station platform of the L & N Station that replaced the old train shed when the grade separation was built in 1930. The platforms are reached by stairways and the waiting room is underneath, below grade. This is currently serving Amtrak's Crescent from Washington to New Orleans, shown in the fourth and fifth photos.
On the model railroad, the 12" wide fold up shelf
fills in the space in front of the elevated grade separation track and this
front, lower level represents the tracks that parallel the grade separation from
Morris Avenue to about 5th Avenue South. In this area the Seaboard came
into downtown, and along with the Birmingham Belt Railroad along E Street, now
5th Avenue South served industrial customers south of downtown. When
the main tracks were raised and the viaducts built in the 1920's this created
some interesting areas with massive retaining walls. A check of the big
map shows the nature of the commercial customers here and who the freight
stations belonged to.
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These photos show some of the key elements to model in this area south of the grade separation. Going left to right, one sees the two Seaboard Air Line tracks that are below the 24th Street viaduct in the foreground and the 22nd Street viaduct in the background. Next is another view of the depressed track, with retaining walls passing beneath the 21st and 22nd Street viaducts. The large brick building in the third photo is the old Birmingham Electric Company powerhouse, which served to power the streetcar system. As the street sign shows, we are at 1st Avenue South, at 19th Street.
The brick building is the Atlanta, Birmingham and Coast freight house, near interstate 65 at the south end of this area, and is actually on the north side of the grade separation. The gray building with the overhang and the arched doors is the Seaboard Air Line freight house which now serves Alagasco as an office and community meeting space. The last photo shows the types of buildings that will be used for "flats" to disguise the "north" end of the grade separation area on the upper level, to hide the staging yard. The elements of this scene are going to be freely "compressed" and even mixed around as far as location. Part of the fun is the ability to "break the rules" when modeling. I am not a rivet counter. Rather, I am interested in capturing the character of a scene, much as a caricature cartoon captures the subject.
The railroad could use a labor force that is more dedicated than I am. I would consider help from interested folks sharing the same interests in the steam era modeling of the Birmingham area. I think more progress would be made if there was some peer pressure and a regular weekly work schedule.
As a last piece of information, I have provided a link to the plan of the layout and basement: Track Plan
