The Continuing Evolution
of the Morgan Creek Railroad.

The Morgan Creek Railroad started off as a diminutive, elongated 100' loop on the terrace of our Tokyo apartment and became an absolutely minuscule 14' x 14' loop on the back patio of a brownstone in Center City Philadelphia. Good fortune has smiled on the MCRR and it has been reestablished along a perimeter fence in San Jose, California.

MCRR #58 (first incarnation) pulling in to Cherry Hill on my layout in Tokyo 1991.

Ben Taksl Mining & Const. #2 on plow duty on the Morgan Creek in Philadelphia 1994.

I quickly established a theme and philosophy for my live steam railroad... and then just as quickly was forced to change it. Thus started the ever-so-much-fun evolution of my form of live steam practice. It suits my interests, is not for everyone, and very little is original philosophy. Like most contemporary railroads it draws heavily on the words and experience of the many well know live steam "philosophers".

I quickly had to get used to tight radius curves. This is against the religion of many, particularly live steamers, but I've decided to cut my own trail in this regard. No doubt about it, a 2' radius curve is too tight. But if that's the only radius that fits around the girder on a Tokyo apartment building then it's just right. Actually I've become more practical in my old age and have decided that 2.5' is the minimum radius I'll use. As you stand there jaw agape reading this realize that I've also learned that 5' radius turnouts are worth every inch of siding that you have to give up in order to get them to fit. Apply some simple math to my 14' x 14' layout in Philadelphia and you will quickly see that those were short sidings! Conventional wisdom is that a radius of 10' is the absolute minimum radius that should be used on a live steam layout. The bumper sticker slogan of "Question Authority" comes to mind...

An overview of the 14'x14' layout on our patio in Philadelphia. You can see the 2.5' radius curves and 4' radius LGB 1600 turnouts. The flat car is a Lionel shorty, and the coach is standard LGB with a few inches chopped out of the middle for that "Sierra" look. The bridge on the right made it to San Jose with the rest of the MCRR assets.

One of the things that a short radius layout will force is the realization that you are probably going to be sticking pretty close to narrow gauge practice. K4s and Daylights are out, Porters and Kerr Stuarts are in. The fun of shunting and switching replaces the fun of notched up high speed mainline running... and you quickly go in search of a few friends with nice big layouts. (Remind me to tell you my theory on boat ownership that draws on this same logic.)

I've borrowed another key practice from others too. If the layout is small, if the curves are tight, and if the sidings are short... choose short rolling stock. Disconnects and two axle ore gondolas lend themselves to the theme, and even a set of Colorado narrow gauge coaches may come up wanting. (Thank goodness for those Sierra type shorty passenger cars.) LGB recent introduction of the bullet proof logging disconnects coincided perfectly with my two year old's desire to "play trains" and the shorty rolling stock theme. For a less plastic approach, many craftspeope are offering completely scale 1:20 rolling stock that fits the shorty theme.

There is the principle of the Golden Mean in art and design which is a ratio of width to height that seems to universally appeal to the human eye and also occurs in nature. I have a railroading allegory that I call The Rule of Odds: any rake of rolling stock under 10 pieces long should be either 1,3,5,7, or 9 units long. Try it out for yourself... even numbers of rolling stock look funny. With short sidings, pick short rolling stock so that you can get at least 5 wagons, 3 sets of disconnects (that makes six discrete units which violates the Rule of Odds but it's three sets so I rest my case), etc.

Short little cars and agile locomotives. These are two-axle LGB gondolas cut down in height and planked with weathered basswood. The false loads are real Morgan Creek right of way dirt affixed with carpenters glue mixed with water.

Furthermore, if your are space constrained like I always seem to be, you will be able to benefit from the very fact that your plans and ideas can't get away from you. It's hard to look at a 14' x 14' patio and imagine the Gorre & Daphetid reproduced in 1:20 scale in that space. You automatically start to think about what you can do with it... and when it's limited you can immediately start to justify the extra work often required to build a waist high or raised roadbed. I can tell you: 50 feet of waist high track is an order of magnitude more enjoyable than 100 feet at ground level. And borrowing from the late Grover Devine, it is even more interesting when you can mix the two. Run with this a little bit over a cup of hot chocolate, a sharp pencil, and some scratch paper. A smaller raised layout will be more enjoyable than a larger one at ground level... in my humble opinion. Related to this is the fact that my kids and I very much enjoy these railroads together and I've raised the roadbed such that it brings the play area up to their height, and helps keep them from stumbling all over it. Those of you who do this sort of thing know that it's pretty tough for those little hands to re-rail rolling stock. You'd be amazed at how much easier it is for kids to "operate" the railroad when it's raised for them too.

Only one more bit of background prattle and I can then describe for you my current work in progress. I really really really like Welsh locomotives. I also really really really like Porters, small Baldwins, and geared locomotives. Send me photos if I'm wrong, but it's pretty tough to model these together and stick in even a loose way with an existing prototype. There are a few exceptions but you end up in WWI history, or post WWI history with Baldwin's that the Welsh natives didn't like because they kept tipping over. Really. South East Asia is a possibility because all sorts of locomotives went there but I must say (and I hope this doesn't offend) but I'm not fond of what happened to those little Baldwins and Porters when they got there. 'Nuff said. Back to my affinity for Welsh locomotives and small US locomotives and what to do. The answer is to cut more trail. Click here and I'll bore you with the historical details of how the Goldfysh & Whymsy came to share trackage rights with the Morgan Creek deep in the woods on the Left Coast of the Unites States. Fascinating, it really is, particularly in light the current wave of historical revisionism.

So that covers that. Now I can tell you about my current opus. It consists of about 150' of raised roadbed, one end as high as 4.5', the other end as low as 2'... a sloping lot allows for 0% grade... (you have to average over a 6' length, my level is only that long.) It's loop to loop but is disguised to look like a point to point. Minimum radius is 2.5' (one 180 degree loop), all the rest is minimum 5' radius. Instead of point to loop I've started calling it a sling shot... you can stand at the one end, let a locomotive go, it will loop through the 5' radius loop and come back to you. Then do a runaround and let the sling shot go again.

You can see the turntable area, the free span, the 5' radius loop outside the fence line, and the 2.5' radius return loop at the other end. The loop and sidings on the left are actually twice as long as shown above... got carried away.

A. MCRR #58 (latest incarnation) with the ore drag. This shot shows the "immaturity" of my railroad. The planter has yet to be planted, and you can just make out the gaping 3'x2' hole that will be filled with a Mexican Sage while we figure out if an orange tree will survive that corner of the yard.

All turnouts are 5' minimum, and I sold all my LGB track and bought some gorgeous code 215 track from Gary Broeder at Llagas Creek. I am too cheap to spring for nickel silver rail so I painted all the rail rust brown before I assembled it. (How does the saying go? "I spent all my money on track and live steam locomotives; the rest I just wasted...") The line includes a 24" turntable and switching yard, all enclosed in a fairly weather proof open air shed of sorts. This "awning" has provided a great place to steam up on sunny afternoons, I'll get back to you on how useful it is during the winter rainy season.

B. This is the turntable inside the open air shed. The table is 24", and there are two steamup bays with two storage bays. You can see the roofing felt on plywood construction in this shot. This will eventually be ballasted with dirt glued on with (what else) 50/50 carpenters glue and water. The turntable is a piece of 1/2 inch oak resting on a code 250 pit rail... which exactly matches the 3/4" plywood hole. A 1/2" bolt resting on two washers centers the turntable in the pit.


B. This is the same scene, but months and months later. I'm starting to accumulate some yard clutter, and I you can see that standard garden variety dirt that I glued to anything that was horizontal.

I have a 14' span that incorporates a 4' wooden through arch bridge and 10' of girder on red brick. In the two switching yards, minimum siding length is 10' and the design will easily handle longish rakes of the shorty rolling stock that I like, or about 5 LGB style box cars with caboose.

I was a little sorry that this project ended... the kids and I were having fun! That rebar sticks about six feet into the ground.

C. The Morgan Creek Bridge. Why they called it a creek nobody knows... it's been a dry gulch for as long as anyone can remember.

D. Contractor's Porter on the raised line. This shot shows the raised shelf that is 24" wide and the painted code 215 Llagas Creek track that I am using. The track is balasted with "pigeon grit" adhered with 50/50 water and carpenter's glue. The edges of the deck are trimmed in redwood lathe to visually finish off the edges.

E. MCRR Baldwin #9 on the high line headed back to the yard. The loop is 5' radius. You can see the open air shed in the background. I'm about to repaint this frame a much darker gray. The grand scheme is to replace it with a stone or brick viaduct. This frame was built with some very funky plastic saw horse legs that I came across at Home Depot. They are intended to be used for a three legged table, but if you use the outside angles you can build a hexagon.

I like to spot cars, shunt light locomotives, pull rakes around backwards, as well as just heat up a locomotive and let it go for half an hour. This most recent version of the MCRR seems to be meeting my design objectives well and we all seem to be having fun. The kids have already commandeered the end of the line that is at their height and the battery powered engine is getting a serious workout at their hands.

So there you have it. The Morgan Creek Railroad in progress. When I get the edges all dolled up I'll throw a few more photos over the wall. I'm sure that the next railroad will be free of all the undiscovered things about my current design that annoy me, only to have the next one be further improved. Some day I'll have 14 acres and a staff of highly paid civil engineers to do my bidding and then I'll set about reproducing in exact detail the Gorre & Daphetid in weatherproof 1:20 scale. In the meantime the kids and I are having a ball... even with that 2.5' radius return loop.