Adventures in Elevation

The General Motors trackage and Penn Mary/Canton yard tracks and leads are in place and operational, track for Consolidated Coal is nearly finished, and a shakedown run is tentatively planned. I’m hopeful that I don’t need to make any more edits and that the shakedown run will show that the trackwork is pretty solid so I can start ballast and other ground cover. With that, I thought it might be time to consider what the next bits might look like.

Consider is the operative word here, because I want to stay true to my plan and not get too far ahead on anything. There is a lot of scenery work and structure building to be done here (see the video for some early mock-ups of the GM plant and the Keith Avenue overpass), and there’s a huge gap in the open grid benchwork over near where I-895 and I-95 will cross the tracks on bridges. I’m not even sure what I’m doing there yet, although I have some ideas.

This area is mostly flat, with a whopping 7/32″ of elevation change, so currently the layout is looking rather “plywood Pacific”-ish. I got to thinking it would be nice spice things up with obvious elevation changes as you move on from this area. Although I hadn’t given much thought to the roadways crossing the tracks during track planning, it turns out that my chosen location gives me inherent scenic potential. Here, the B&O tracks are relatively high in terms of elevation above sea level, and thus the roads utilize numerous underpasses. (See the opening image.) This means elevation changes without having to raise the track height relative to the floor.

Refer to this section of the track plan, which I’ve recently updated with detail. (The latest draft of the full track plan is here.) See that area that says “Conrail Staging for ‘Other Industries'”? Those other industries are intended to be those over in Fells Point. But during an op session I don’t want it to look like there are cars just sitting there, y’know, staged. I considered the “5 inch backdrop” there to hide the cars, but after living with the concept for while, decided that I probably wouldn’t like how that would turn out. Mostly because I’ve never seen a convincing example in my various layout travels, at least for tracks below my eye level.

So what to do?

Well, once again the prototype helped me out. (Those familiar with the area will note that my geography is off. More on that later, although I will once again invoke the “This is Monument City, not actually Baltimore” excuse, er, explanation.) Return one more time to the opening photo and you’ll notice that, in addition to the underpass, there is a rather large structure to the left. That used to be Crown Cork & Seal (now the “Crown Industrial Park”), and although once served by the B&O, I can find no concrete evidence that it still was in 1984. (If you have info to the contrary, please let me know.) Even so, it’s a nice, long, tall structure that I can use to hide a good chunk of those staging tracks while leaving them relatively accessible.

Here’s a (bad) sketch of my concept of how I thought this could work. That rectangle on the left that has all those little non-square-yet-squarelike shapes  is how I figured I could use Crown Cork as a view block for the staging tracks. I might even try to use it to hide the other Conrail tracks (the light blue ones in the track plan) in that corner, but the jury is still out.

There were some other neat details that clinched Eastern Ave. for me in this location (as opposed to a different underpass). Next time we’ll talk about them.

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