Model Railroading > Walthers car float operations, anyone else

incorporate tugs and carfloats ?

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

The Milwaukee Road operations out of Seattle would be a nice prototype.

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Very much agree on Milwaukee's Car Barge operation. At one time they ran from a half dozen locations and converged on Seattle. Here's a link to some equipment and descriptions:

http://www.mrcd.org/puget_sound_barges.html

The SF Bay area also had a number of car barge routes but they were more complex, larger barges but shorter runs. There are photos in the TO archives.

There is, or were car barges serving isolated Paper Mills and such along the British Columbia Coast. Not sure of their present status, always an interesting thought though.

There's also the Seattle to Alaska Car Ferry, it's a much larger operation that the Walther's kit. Also in the TO archives, from quite a few years back.

Not sure I've seen the loading process integrated into a model layout, except on paper (of course there's a few impressive layouts based on the steam car ferries up in Michigan or somewhere on the Great Lakes). I was able to purchase a barge and ramp kit intending to represent a small operation like the Milwaukee on the Puget Sound (yes, still actively staged in their original boxes). I thought I read that the Walther's kit is patterned after the NYC on the East Coast. Not sure what the differences would be, except to compare the kit and the photos in the above link.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/13 23:51 by TCnR.

I just put my new carfloat together last weekend, really happy with it, I'm planning on a inbound track, a outbound track and a staging yard (12 cars ,3 x 4 cars each track) with a switcher engine,,,pics hopefully tonite on this thread

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

Also in British Columbia in the interior was a car float operation in the Kootenay Region out of Slocan. A CP roadmaster who who worked the area said there were even industrial 'sidings' worked completely from the barge.

Jim

Jim, I think MR did a article or two on that operation, Mine will be closer to NYC area though b/c I like the co mingling of NY Central and New Haven in the area

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

RMC Railroad Model Craftsman's current Dec. 2013 issue has an excellent cover story on the CPR's Okanagan carfloat operation.

While not on my layout, my brother made this one a year ago for a friends layout.

It's based off one of the Detroit river car ferries that used to service Detroit, MI and Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

It's the Walthers car float lengthened and widened and a ton of scratch built parts.

I'm no good at photoshop so the best I could do was crop out most of the foreground crap I used to prop up the model to take a photo of it.
What makes the photo a bit interesting is that I took the photo at the former Pere Marquette / C&O / Chessie / CSX boat slip in Port Huron, MI.

PS: If anyone's good at photoshop and wants to have a go at getting rid of the crap holding the ferry up, go for it!

Kris

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Nice looking ferry. The "Ramon" of the Sacramento Northern would be another good subject.

Here in Sarnia, Ontario, CN & GT interchanged cars across the St.Clair River to and from Port Huron, Mi. until the mid-nineties when CN built their new tunnel under the river. They would ferry mostly high-cube cars and autoracks across the river, up to I think 12 at a time, depending on which car float they were using. As dcmkris (above) notes, CSX also did the same thing, but ended that operation some years earlier. That's some of the refineries, Imperial Oil maybe, in Sarnia in the background of his photo.

I built just the Walthers car float, but have never used it. It went together well and was fun to put together. One downside is that you might also want/need to have a yard area large enough to hold the cars in as you unload/load the float.

Jim

Does anybody use the car barge as an interchange to cycle cars off the layout and into the off-layout world?

Long day, I am building a yard for the carfloat operation, and I am planning to store some cars on it to rotate the rolling / floating cars, I have it sitting on a 1 x 4 piece of foam which is on a hospital food tray table (elevates up and down)

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

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For several years I wanted a true island on my lay out. Twelve years ago I had the opportunity to build a new garage and put my lay out in it. I built the island that I wanted. The only way to get the island is by car float. I build the Walther's car float, tug, and two car aprons. My son built me a cart to put my car float on. When my son comes to visit the next time I will ask him to help me post some pictures of it. I like to free lance model railroading so I can move Two Harbors, Minnesota into the middle of Wyoming.

A couple of thoughts on modeling the ferry service.

First a large yard is not necessarily needed. The Soo Line's St Ignace, MI ferry slip had a fairly small yard for switching out the Chief Wawatam. While during the DSS&A years the yard at St Ignace was bigger and used as the main ferry classifying yard in the later Soo Line years late 1970's & 1980's the ferry was switched out and the whole train dragged all the way back to Trout Lake which is about 60+ miles away. It would be easy enough to model this as a off layout yard.

Our friend plans on having two ferries eventually. They would be on carts that can store under another part of the layout. Basically a ferry comes in is worked and then goes across the lake while the other ferry makes the same trek to the slip the first one just left.
The train which just switched the ferry then is forwarded on to his hidden staging yard where the cars are broken down for various industries on the layout. All the while the locals are making their pickups at the industries which will head to the yard and then on to a ferry.

This keeps the cars constantly changing on the railroad.

When we have our layout built we eventually plan on having a ferry slip as well and will interchange cars with his road further offering a change in cars.

Kris

Conductor_Pappy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For several years I wanted a true island on my lay
> out. Twelve years ago I had the opportunity to
> build a new garage and put my lay out in it. I
> built the island that I wanted. The only way to
> get the island is by car float. I build the
> Walther's car float, tug, and two car aprons. My
> son built me a cart to put my car float on. When
> my son comes to visit the next time I will ask him
> to help me post some pictures of it. I like to
> free lance model railroading so I can move Two
> Harbors, Minnesota into the middle of Wyoming.
Wow a island ,I really want to see these pics !!! great idea, you got me thinking now !

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

The island idea fits with the isolated paper mill.

Kinda tough to explain the paper mill to your Environmentally sensitive visitors... but it fits.