Lac Frontiere P.Q. - Layout Design

Research for my next layout based on Lac Frontiere, P.Q.has proceeded much more quickly than I expected. Quite a bit of time this weekend was spent on attempting to figure out the track arrangement in Lac Frontiere, and despite the fact that I'm not completely sure of the track arrangements, there seems to be enough information to start moving forward to layout design for this layout. 

As far as I can tell, most of the operation and railway facilities in Lac Frontiere were concentrated in an area that was about three-tenths of a mile long and around 300 feet at its widest point. The railway facilities appear to be across the main road (named Rue Principale, according to Google Maps) form the center of town in Lac Frontiere, such as it is. This fairly small area should make designing a layout around Lac Frontiere less difficult, as less compression of the railway facilities will be necessary. Also, along Rue Principale near the station area there are an assortment of older houses in a quite distinctive style that seems common in Quebec but nonexistent elsewhere. I'm do not know a great deal about architecture, particularly in Quebec, but I've spent enough time looking through photographs of small towns on railroad lines in New England and astern Canada to recognize that these houses have a fairly distinct style. Therefore, I'd like to find a way to include some of these houses in my layout of Lac Frontiere to help set the layout in eastern Quebec, as opposed to western or northern Maine or New Brunswick.

On the map of the Quebec Central in Lac Frontiere that I have been working on, I highlighted the area that I think is of the most interest to model. As the highlighting is not public, I took a picture on my computer to post here.

Area highlighted in blue is what I think is most interesting to model.

From the image above, you can see that the area that is, in my opinion, the most interesting part of Lac Frontiere to model is a fairly small area in terms of length and width. In the above image, you can see most of the track detail, but if you want to see the map in more detail, you can visit the actual map here (or, you can click on the image to make it bigger or access the map from the Lac Frontiere railway map page at the top of the blog). 

The highlighted area includes what I believe to be the location of the QC station in Lac Frontiere, as well as the probable location of a team track and what I think was a pulpwood siding. This small handful of sidings, as far as I know, made up the entirety of railway facilities in Lac Frontiere. Combined, they ought to make for a quite interesting operating session for one person when the layout is built, especially when operating with prototypical speeds, which most likely would not have been much faster than walking pace by the late 1970s. The image above also shows where some of the interesting Quebec-style houses that I want to include on the layout are located, at the intersection of Rue Principale and Rue de l'Eglise. 

While this image shows the operationally interesting part of Lac Frontiere, to make operations on the layout possible, there will have to be some track modeled to the north of the station area. For this section of track, I plan on including a model of the bridge crossing the Saint John River in Lac Frontiere. This, as from what I can tell through google streetview, was made up of two seventy foot long side plate girder spans. I'm not sure yet whether these were side girder or under-track girder spans, though perhaps a reader can help me on this?

At any rate, I also highlighted this other section of modeling interest in Lac Frontiere on my online railway map of Lac Frontiere, and I'll post this here, as well.

As you can (sort of, thanks to the big blue box) see, the highlighted area shows the location of the bridge. As far as I can tell, track extended north form the bridge for a few hundred feet to the end of the branch. The bridge was located a few hundred feet from the station area towards the center of Lac Frontiere.

Now that I'v determined what parts of Lac Frontiere are of interest to model, it's time to start to think about how to actually come to a working layout design. To start with, I need to determine if I want to build the layout as a fixed layout or a modular layout, or some combination of the two. If I decide to build the layout as a fixed layout, I have a space of roughly eleven and a half feet long by two feet wide to work with, which is a decent space and would not require over compression of Lac Frontiere, though it might be tight and I might have to cut the bridge seen form the layout. On the other hand, a modular layout design would allow me to build the layout much closer to true length, with fairly minor compression, and would allow me to keep the bridge scene. At the same time, the fact that a permanent layout is, well, permanent has its appeal, especially in that it would always be available to work on or operate.

I will try to make a few rough layout plans, most likely, before I decide what approach to take for this layout. On the whole, however, I lean toward building a permanent layout based on Lac Frontiere, but I'll see if I can find a way to make a satisfactory layout design for my space before I come to a final decision. Until I can come up with a working layout design, I have an Accurail kit to work on for a CP Rail boxcar, and I might look into starting to work on a model of one of the houses in Lac Frontiere.