Home » Excellent HO Model Train Layout Ideas From The Blood Sweat and Tears Railroad

Excellent HO Model Train Layout Ideas From The Blood Sweat and Tears Railroad

Posted: Monday, December 28, 2009

by Jimmy Hardwick
Model Train Mastery

The HO model train layout is one of the most popular for railroading hobbyists. Products and accessories are widely available in this train scale, and its affordable pricing puts it within range of even the most frugal model railroader. Some very impressive designs have stemmed from the use of HO scale train products. After all, your train layout is only limited by your imagination, creativity, and of course, the funds you have available to allocate to your hobby.

Many modelers do not let the lack of cash stop their designs from being far from ordinary. Many railroaders pride themselves in their ability to create amazing scenery and accessories from scratch, usually from materials available around their homes and/or yards.

The Blood Sweat and Tears Railroad at bstrailroad.com boasts an impressive HO design that demonstrates great creative railroad modeling skills. The layout was created by Gary Courtemanche, with inspiration from John Allen and George Selios.

The era of this layout is circa 1930 and it seeks to portray the waterfront of New England in a very traditional manner, along with a busy cityscape, a mountain mining town, and the rural countryside of the Canadian province of Ontario .

The BS & T design does not require the purchase of costly or difficult to find materials. Its components consist of items that are easily obtained. The box shaped 1"x3" benchwork relies on 2"x2" legs for support and has a 5/8" plywood top surface.

Gary used cellulose fiberboard on top of the plywood to absorb sound and provide a workable surface for scenery and the track roadbed. The layout has no grades, so the layout benchwork is flat and does not require any risers. He constructed his layout directly on top of the cellulose board.

The track layout consists of:

Da Capo, a small town at the summit of a mountain with two tunnels
Bar Harbour, whose freight shipments travel through Da Capo on their way to the rest of the line. Bar Harbour has the only switching yard on the BS & T railroad.
The bustling city of Dissonance , the scenery of which depicts liquor, sex, and life during the prohibition
Fine, a peaceful mountainside mining town far from the urban metropolis lifestyle
Harmony, a sparsely populated town producing lumber, feed, and grains
Solo Valley , a passage for local freight across an amazing trestle bridge into the mining town of Fine

When you visit the website, you can scroll through gallery shots that show the detailing of his outstanding railroad design. Gary 's layout of the Blood Sweat and Tears railroad will take you back in time to a by-gone era. His design is a wonderful tribute to the HO model train layout. This design serves as an inspiration to anyone interested in the model railroad hobby.

I'm Jimmy Hardwick, lifetime lover of model trains and railroading. Want more help with your ho model train layout? Visit my site ModelTrainMastery.com, where you'll get access to a freight car full of information to help you enjoy the greatest of all hobbies.

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