The Upper Level: The Plan for Plummer

In the most recent blog, I outlined the plan to build Spokane's MILW yard in my basement, along a 26 foot wall.  The yard will be a significant part of the lower level and a key operational focus area for the layout.  The lower level will also include several industry spurs around the yard, as well as the junction point of Dishman where both routes will enter the helix to go to different places.  The helix and the lower level concept will be covered in more detail in a future installment. 

That leaves this question open: what will be on the upper level?

A Key Location on the MILW Transcon
The upper level will be focused on one key scene: Plummer ID.  Located on the famed MILW Pacific Extension, Plummer was one of a few operational points on the long mainline to the West coast.  Plummer is the junction point between the mainline and a "branch" to Spokane.  Operationally, it was the place where road trains setout and picked up cars bound for Spokane industries, the branches radiating from Spokane, and interchange cars.  Plummer was also site for a small group of sorting tracks, and also home to a few industries on both MILW and UP.  Recall that UP ran a daily local from Spokane to Kellogg ID, passing through Plummer.  You can learn more about how Plummer fits into the other towns by clicking here.  Most interestingly, Plummer is located on a wye between the branch to Spokane and the transcontinental mainline, while at the same time is the location where the UP branchline to Wallace splits away.  This makes Plummer a confluence of four different physical lines (in 1973), plus it is home to a yard, passing siding, and several industries.  Plummer was also an active train order station for the MILW, so it was home to an agent-operator 24-7.

What I find most fascinating about Plummer is how MILW handled car movements to Spokane.  The cars that the road trains setout had to somehow get to Spokane.  The mechanism to move these cars to Spokane was a daily local train, number 63/64, nicknamed the "Plummer Turn."  Although this train was in the timetable, on most days it appears that this train ran extra from Spokane to Plummer and return, typically at night.   A few more details, and an image of the turn on the road between Plummer and Spokane can be seen by clicking here.  The Plummer Turn arrived at Plummer with cars destined to the mainline.  These cars were blocked before the train departure from Spokane, and the local had to setout the blocks at predetermined places in Plummer, which in classic MILW fashion meant "anyplace where they fit."  Then, the local picked up all of the mainline train setouts so the cars could be brought to Spokane in a mine-run style where they were later switched. 

At the same time, the MILW turn local also had a few industries to work in town.  Moves had to be planned out due to limited real estate.  Due to the somewhat complex track arrangement at the location of the wye, turning the train around and performing the air test, all the while potentially needing to keep the mainline track clear, meant that the layout potential "play value" for the local at Plummer is fairly high.

As if that is not enough, the large UP local train from Spokane to Kellogg ID ran through Plummer before re-entering UP Wallace Branch rails there (simulated by staging parallel to the MILW East staging in my plan).  The UP local train also served an active lumber mill customer and a fuel distributor in Plummer proper along its former line toward Tekoa.  This line was abandoned in 1957 and the rail was torn up to the West of the aforementioned lumber mill.  So, for operational interest, the UP train also occupied MILW's rail real estate in the vicinity of the Plummer wye when it was in town.  Interestingly, the MILW had a telephone pole shipper located right on the UP line - not on a spur - which meant that if the MILW had a car spotted there, UP needed to move the car to access the lumber mill and/or the fuel distributor.

To familiarize yourself with the region, here are the relevant lines for the layout:

Click to enlarge

Here is an aerial view of the Plummer wye area from 1967, available from Ted Schnepf of Rails Unlimited - click here for a link to his store full of MILW images, and books and models from various roads.  I have added notes to this image to identify ownership.
 

Click to enlarge

Here is an aerial view of the Plummer yard area from 1967, available from Ted Schnepf of Rails Unlimited - click here for a link to his store full of MILW images, and books and models from various roads.  I have added notes to this image to identify ownership.  Note the UP trackage at right. 

Click to enlarge

A Peek at Plummer Operations
The wye at Plummer is one of the most iconic locations on the entire Pacific extension.  While it was in "the gap" between the two electrified districts of the west, it was a place where most trains stopped to work, which meant that many railfans stopped there as well to shoot the trains.  One of the coolest photographic stories told at Plummer is available in Fred Hyde's "The Milwaukee Road," published by Hyrail Productions (Dale Sanders of CTCBoard fame) in 1990.  On pages 140-141, photographer Ed Austin recorded a 3 train meet at Plummer in 1973.  The sequence went like this:
1.  Transcontinental train #266 arrives in Plummer
2.  Train #266 sets out and picks up cars to/from Spokane in the siding
3.  At some point during this operation, the Plummer turn arrives from Spokane and waits on the wye
4.  Train #266 departs Plummer (and the Plummer turn provides a roll-by)

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 5.  As train #266's caboose departs, the UP Kellogg-Spokane local returning to Spokane arrives on the UP Wallace branch, and holds clear of the crossover (the MILW train is occupying the route to Spokane so it could not physically proceed)

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6.  The Plummer Turn pulls onto the MILW mainline (slowly following train 266's caboose)
7.  The Plummer Turn backs into the siding to setout cars from Spokane, and pickup cars to Spokane
8.  The UP Kellogg-Spokane Local leaves its train on the wye and with the road power goes around the other leg of the wye to retrieve local cars at one of the industries.  At this point all three legs of the wye are being utilized!

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9.  The UP Kellogg-Spokane Local finishes its work in Plummer, does an air test, and leaves
10.  The MILW job finishes its block swapping and any switching, and leaves town.  Most UP-MILW interchange occurred in Spokane.

Thanks to this sort of interesting operations that can consume 2-3 operators on a proposed layout, Plummer seems to me to be a natural place to model even as a standalone layout design element.  It has many sweeping curves which make it fit well into a basement of any size, including mine.  Because of its popularity with MILW fans, it might offer more of a modeling challenge if it does not lay out in a physically accurate way, but after months of design this plan does it justice.

Plummer's operation is very believable; MILW operated it almost like a freelance or proto-freelance model railroad would operate it.  After all, most railroads, even in the 1970s and prior, would have engineered a train(s) to run directly to and from Spokane yard from another yard at a nearby crew change point, such as Avery and/or Othello.  Instead, MILW road crews left cars in the small yard at Plummer, as well as right in the passing siding.  This of course has its pluses and minuses for the layout plan.  On the minus side, transcontinental trains do not meet here.  This could be interesting operationally, but two trains meeting on a train order railroad that hosts approximately eight total through trains per day is not nearly as interesting to me as road trains working, a local switching cars and making car connections to another yard, and maximizing the play value of the cars.  After all, cars and their movement between trains holds a strong interest for me thanks to my backgound at a Class 1 trying to remove such "inefficiencies."  

The fact that MILW used the siding for car storage has been deemed operationally interesting to me, but these operations are compounded by another physical reality: the MILW mainline and siding are on a 1.0% continuous grade through Plummer!  This must have meant that alot of handbrakes were set on cars and switching was a bit tricky, especially with slow loading GE U25/28Bs that were common on road trains in the gap in 1973, as well as on the Plummer Turn.  I need to confirm my hunch with Randy and anyone else who operated it.  Guys?

Translating the Prototype to My Basement
After several months of iterations, the design for Plummer now lays out pretty nicely on the upper level of my basement space.  To get to Plummer from the lower level, trains will arrive via the helix which originates at Dishman.  As you come out of the helix, you enter the visible part of the railroad: the Plummer wye area, with the depot in the middle.  From there, the route from Dishman sweeps around the large curve at Plummer, just like the prototype.  It will wrap around the outside of the helix, which makes great use of the helix space (and coincidentally a similar subject was discussed in the 2013 issue of Model Railroad Planning after Matt Sugerman and I hashed out this concept).  The crossover is in place to the MILW mainline headed East.  The other track is the UP branch to Kellogg, just like in the prototype.  These two tracks go to staging right away at roughly 56 inches.

Going around the other leg of the wye, the MILW Plummer siding track starts, and there is a connection from the MILW wye tracks to the UP industry lead as mentioned above.  The entire wye lays out just like the prototype, as you can see.

Click to enlarge

From there, the siding and mainline wrap to the North wall in a directionally-correct curve.  Then, situated above the Spokane yard (on the lower level) will be the yard and industry tracks of Plummer.  My plan is to construct a hollow wall behind the Plummer upper level yard and industry tracks since that scene does not need to be more than 22 or so inches deep, and frankly with the layout height it will not be reachable if it is that deep.  But in order to make standing at the fascia practical, I have to bring it out from the wall since the Spokane yard below is at 30 inches wide.  This footprint means that the upper level benchwork needs to be that wide as well.

After all of the Plummer industry tracks, heading railroad west, the MILW mainline will disappear naturally behind the highway 95 overpass.  The Sorrento tunnel is on the other side of that overpass in real life and would make a great ending point for the scenery of the upper level and the transition to staging, but in order to make the model curve broader and the Plummer yard longer, I am foregoing that detail.  This was a compromise I felt worth making.

The entire upper level of Plummer will be built on a constant 1% grade as it wraps around the room in a counter-clockwise fashion.  This allows the layout to emulate the ruling grade of the prototype.  It also allows me to stack the mainline staging which is important because I want the train lengths to be up to 24 feet or so.  With open autoracks, Vert-a-pacs, and trailer flats as key players in my through road train consists (as well as play value when they transfer to the Plummer Turn for their ride to Spokane), operating behind 3-4 unit sets of power as large as SD40-2s, I want my mainline train sizes to better resemble the ~4500 foot MILW mainline trains from that era.  If I tried to make the upper level a continuous loop, the mainline train size would need to drop to ~16 feet in order to fit into a double-ended staging yard, or I would have to reduce the amount of visible layout because the mainline loop size would be constrained by the basement dimensions.  To me, the win-win combination of train length and following the prototype grade was an easy decision versus the convenience of a continuous-run upper level.

I struggled with what part of this layout to build first, but I have been cautioned by many accomplished layout pros to construct the helix first so I can build it somewhat freely and not be forced into having the track enter and exit the various previously-built levels at a precise height.  So I have heeded that advice and have started at the "lowest" point of the layout plan, which is the lowest level staging yard (representing the Metaline Falls and Couer D'Alene branches - more on that in another post).  I have also completed the transition to the helix, and am now building the helix.  As of Thanksgiving my son and I are running our Walthers Amtrak F40PH-led test train up almost one full turn now, and his (and my) excitement is building as the track is glued down at each quarter turn.

Pictures to come soon.