As I research Cleveland Ohio and Cleveland Union Terminal for my model railroad, I am reminded of my time as a student in the US Army Command & General Staff College. For those that don't know, CGSC is a graduate-level course for Army Majors hoping to become Lieutenant Colonels that covers topics such as leadership, military doctrine, military history, and operational art, to name just a few.
I spent a lot of time in CGSC writing papers as the culmination of researching a given topic. It was no different than any other graduate-level course where you receive a list of questions about a topic and you have to pull research from many different sources and then essay the answers to the questions.
That's kind of what I feel like I am doing here in planning my model railroad. There are so many sources to research from, but the product of the research will be the layout rather than a paper. In the planning stage, you can use one (or more than one) of the CAD-based software programs (I am using AnyRail 5) to create your track plan. Just like writing a paper, with the software you can easily go back and make changes to the plan or even start a completely new one as you develop your final product, and the only thing it costs you is time.
While writing a paper for school, eventually you have to turn it in and at that point no more changes can be made. Building a model railroad, once you start to put track to benchwork with spike or adhesive, you are pretty much turning in that paper and while you can always make changes to a layout, now it becomes more difficult to make them. Long story short: you probably better have your concept and plan realized by that point or now it becomes very painful (and costly - in time and now money) to make drastic changes. I hope to make sure everything is the way I want it before it becomes permanently attached to the benchwork. I'm sure this will be more difficult than I think it is.
Ok, back to model railroading research.
I've found a lot of research sources for CUT and 1940's-1950's Cleveland, some of which I have mentioned in earlier posts. There is the Cleveland Memory Project and it's excellent photographic collection from the construction of Cleveland Union Terminal. You can find it here. Most of the photos are from the 1920's up to 1930, when CUT opened for business. The problem is there are no photos from the operational period (1930-1970-ish) of the terminal in the collection.
I have found a few other resources that I think all model railroaders can use for researching their layouts. One is Historic Map Works, which they say has 1,662,956 historical maps & images. They have a collection of the Hopkins plat maps of Cleveland from the 1930's, which I have found invaluable for track planning because the maps are scale drawings to include all rail lines and who owns them. They also show who owns a particular building and what type of construction - brick, stone, frame, etc.
Another great source of material is the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/. They have an extensive online library to include photographs from all time periods in US history. At the top of the home page is a search bar and if I type in "Cleveland Union Terminal" I get 342 results, everything from photos, prints, and newspapers, to drawings, maps, and diagrams. In particular, I found a collection of 161 photos from a Historical American Buildings Survey of Cleveland Union Terminal from the late 1980's. Included in those photos are three .tif file images of the original blueprints from the terminal from the 1930's that detail the three main levels of the station. More on those later in another post.
Finally, one resource I've been searching for and finally found is an online version of The Official Guide to the Railways. There is an online version of the August 1952 publication available here. For anyone modeling passenger operations, the Official Guide is indispensable. It has full timetables for passenger trains and it also gives you a pretty good idea of what cars a given train ran with and what cars got switched in and out of the train at certain stations.
Now, back to typing my paper...
That's kind of what I feel like I am doing here in planning my model railroad. There are so many sources to research from, but the product of the research will be the layout rather than a paper. In the planning stage, you can use one (or more than one) of the CAD-based software programs (I am using AnyRail 5) to create your track plan. Just like writing a paper, with the software you can easily go back and make changes to the plan or even start a completely new one as you develop your final product, and the only thing it costs you is time.
While writing a paper for school, eventually you have to turn it in and at that point no more changes can be made. Building a model railroad, once you start to put track to benchwork with spike or adhesive, you are pretty much turning in that paper and while you can always make changes to a layout, now it becomes more difficult to make them. Long story short: you probably better have your concept and plan realized by that point or now it becomes very painful (and costly - in time and now money) to make drastic changes. I hope to make sure everything is the way I want it before it becomes permanently attached to the benchwork. I'm sure this will be more difficult than I think it is.
Ok, back to model railroading research.
I've found a lot of research sources for CUT and 1940's-1950's Cleveland, some of which I have mentioned in earlier posts. There is the Cleveland Memory Project and it's excellent photographic collection from the construction of Cleveland Union Terminal. You can find it here. Most of the photos are from the 1920's up to 1930, when CUT opened for business. The problem is there are no photos from the operational period (1930-1970-ish) of the terminal in the collection.
I have found a few other resources that I think all model railroaders can use for researching their layouts. One is Historic Map Works, which they say has 1,662,956 historical maps & images. They have a collection of the Hopkins plat maps of Cleveland from the 1930's, which I have found invaluable for track planning because the maps are scale drawings to include all rail lines and who owns them. They also show who owns a particular building and what type of construction - brick, stone, frame, etc.
Another great source of material is the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/. They have an extensive online library to include photographs from all time periods in US history. At the top of the home page is a search bar and if I type in "Cleveland Union Terminal" I get 342 results, everything from photos, prints, and newspapers, to drawings, maps, and diagrams. In particular, I found a collection of 161 photos from a Historical American Buildings Survey of Cleveland Union Terminal from the late 1980's. Included in those photos are three .tif file images of the original blueprints from the terminal from the 1930's that detail the three main levels of the station. More on those later in another post.
Finally, one resource I've been searching for and finally found is an online version of The Official Guide to the Railways. There is an online version of the August 1952 publication available here. For anyone modeling passenger operations, the Official Guide is indispensable. It has full timetables for passenger trains and it also gives you a pretty good idea of what cars a given train ran with and what cars got switched in and out of the train at certain stations.
Now, back to typing my paper...
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