Is there any good layouts that feature the mainline running parallel to a river for the majority of it? Most I have seen only have a small creek or a small port scene.
csxengineer:wav: , cant say as i have seen a layout like that, HOWEVER, it IS very prototypical:winki: . the CNW mainline ran right along the river going out of Beloit WI, almost all the way to Janesville WI:thumb: ...sadly that part of the CNW line is now a....bikepath:madd: :frowns: .
I recall seeing photos of a club layout like that in an old "How to" Model Railroading book. Sorry can't recall the title but I was impressed wth the scenes. The Twin Cities Model Railroad club has a good long scene on one side following a river (The Mississippi, of course) that looks terrific.
Ralph
I would suspect that you would need a very arge space to make something like that work. It's certainly possible to have a portion of a river on your layout but would require selective compression to fit it in to any layout. It could be an interesting challange.
I think John Armstrong had something like that. IIRC, he modelled just the river bank and a bit of water along the aisle, so that you were viewing from the river, but it made a super viewing/photography spot.
101 Track Plans for Model Railroaders by Linn Westcott on page 51 has a layout like this. It shows the Yosemite Valley paralleling the Merced River almost the whole way around the 10x18 HO scale layout.