Sat 28 Jan 2006

HO Narrow Gauge Railroad You Can Build

Posted by Daniel Swearingen under Layout Design
[4] comments / Leave a comment 

I based my layout on Malcolm Furlow’s San Juan Central in HOn3 as descibed in his MR articles and his book HO Narrow Gauge Railroad You Can Build: A Narrow Gauge Project Railroad.

Starting in the November 1983 issue of Model Railroader and finishing in August 1984, Malcolm Furlow explained how he designed and built the San Juan Central in HOn3. Soon Kalmbach published the articles in book form as HO Narrow Gauge Railroad You Can Build: A Narrow Gauge Project Railroad.

This is a scan of the cover of my (now very tattered) copy I bought in the late-1980′s while working at a model train store in LA.

Long out of print, used copies currently run $60-80.

Malcolm displayed his approach to building layouts — the good and the bad — in this book.

The good:

Modest Size — The San Juan Central is only 8 x 10 overall. Fits into most common bedroom-size rooms of average homes (good for me!).

Strong visuals — Malcolm’s design emphasizes strong visual elements and is literally built for photography.

Vertical over Horizontal — Drama is created by nearly 30 inches (0.8m) of vertical separation between the lowest and highest locations on the layout.

The bad:

Tight turns — As designed, the SJC minimum radius is 15″. What I know of how Malcolm works makes me suspect the trackplan was made on the fly and that the actual layout has even tighter turns but the plans were later redrawn with 16, 17, and 18″ radius turns.

Limited operational possibilities — The SJC emphasizes spectacular scenery. Combined with modest size this means there are not many different ways to move cars and trains around the layout.

“Bald spots” — The SJC has some places that don’t work very well. They tend to be transitions between different spectacular views of the layout.

Photos

overall

Overall view of the San Juan Central

Top (click for larger view)
Top view

What happened to it?

The SJC is currently owned by Charlie Getz who has lovingly restored it to better-than-new condition. Charlie hosted vistors during the 2004 National Narrow Gauage convention in Santa Clara, California and I have several photos of it online.

 

4 Responses to “HO Narrow Gauge Railroad You Can Build”

  1. Dave Starr Says:
    January 29th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Dan, have a version of my own under construction. I also went with HO standard as I had locos, rolling stock, etc, from that gauge. I have bench work finished and have started laying track at Montrose. I am using the published track plan with slight changes to use HO standard. So far so good, I will have limitations on loco and rolling stock size, but should still be a lot of fun. Good Luck with your project. Dave starr

  2. dan Says:
    January 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pm

    Thanks Dave,
    I’ll be posting the trackplan I’m using later tonight. It’s mirrored left-right and Montrose has been changed to “Tiburbon” (a play on Tiburon) and has been morphed to a ferry landing on the San Francisco Bay.

  3. shawn reitsema Says:
    November 16th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    just to let you know that golden spike books is reprinting the original book 25th anniversary edition for $17

  4. Dan Davis Says:
    October 8th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    Thank You for the reply on the Forest Railway. Are their any other photo’s of the layout on the internet, besides Youtube.

    I will look around and see if I can find another copy of the The San Juan Central. Will reply if I find anothe copy.

    Thank You Dan Davis in Longview, WA. On30