Minneapolis Fork. Part 1. An introduction

Step into the Tardis, and travel back in time with me to May 2010, and take a look at Carl Arendt’s Small Layout Scrapbook. There you will find a pretty important micro layout.  I’m talking about Prof. Klyzlr’s “Chicago Fork”. Important because this was the first time the site had featured an 0 scale layout under four square feet. 

I remember how excited Carl was to receive this layout. He and I had conversed a few times by email about the lack of 0 scale Micro’s. Thinking that the larger size of US stock would preclude such a thing. The British might get there, thanks to smaller size locomotives and wagons. But there hadn’t even been a British outline 0 as we talked.  I do recall getting an excited email from him telling me to watch out for the upcoming edition of the Scrapbook for a surprise.

So Chicago Fork has always stuck with me. The space saving dodge of removing one turnout/switch and using the sector plate instead, is the key. A great idea. I wish I’d thought of it.

Over the intervening years it’s an idea that I’ve often revisited. Most recently last summer. 

At the time, I was researching the Plymouth Industrial Park in Minnesota. My office was alongside the line, and two to five times a week I would see the Union Pacific work Coil Cars into Olympic Steel. But there were also many disused spur sidings over the vast area of the park. As I knew I was retiring at the end of the year and would probably not see them again. I decided to walk them and see what I could find. There were many tracks. Many were badly overgrown and difficult to walk. Others were easier. At least one had disappeared under a parking lot It took a few weeks of lunchtimes. But I found all that remained, and I filled a Flickr album with my pictures. 

Plymouth Industrial Park
(Active tracks in yellow, disused spurs in red)

I was going to publish my research in an issue of The Micro Model Railway Dispatch. But then I discovered Eagle Street and the New Orleans Water and Sewerage Board Railroad (Spring 2023 of The Dispatch) and got distracted.

So once again, the idea got shelved. I discovered 16mm scale and worked on other layouts for the rest of last year ready for Trainfest.

But Chicago Fork still niggled at me, and once in a while I’d find myself perusing the relevant page of Scrapbook waiting for inspiration to hit me. 

Then inspiration hit me. But not when looking at “Fork”. Instead it was when I was perusing my photos of Plymouth  Industrial Park. As I looked at a photograph of a couple of once rail served structures with a running line between them. I was reminded of Andrew Middleton’s “Pidley Sidings” published in the Spring 2022 Dispatch. Though clearly an Inglenook scheme. All the point work had been replaced by the sector plate, and the siding that fed the others on the layout was the centre one. The main siding does not have to be one of the outer tracks. It wasn’t anything I had considered before, so that was something of an eye opener for me.

The key to a new scheme

The structures in this image are dull. Dull enough to be featured in Monty Python’s “Lion Tamer” sketch. But my research had revealed plenty more interesting and even brightly coloured buildings that you can see in the Flickr album. An idea formed.

A first concept board

The first thing you might notice is the cutaway building forming a view block at front left. This is an idea I’ve been exploring for a long time, since I first worked up my “Concrete Canyons” idea in about 1998. The building can have a section of interior modelled and you’d be able to view a box car being pushed to its spot through the open door.  That’s something that appeals to me, but I haven’t been able to work it into a concept. 

There we are. Take an idea that you like and run with it. Take it beyond where you found it. I give you Minneapolis Fork. I don’t think The Prof will mind I tweaked his idea to my own ends.

The American industrial park has much to offer the modeller. They can be large or small. The large structures may all seem identical, but could have subtle differences. Locations may have to have trees around them to hide the structures from viewers. Especially if residential areas are nearby. If you’re starved for space and want to recreate one aspect of mainline railroading, the industrial park railroad might be what you’re after.