From Utah To The Black Hills By Way of Montana

Train-order signal at Hill City, SD.

I have traveled far and wide in recent weeks; business took me to Fort Peck, Montana, and pleasure took me to the Black Hills. There is a lot to inspire a modeler in that amount of driving, and here's a quick summation of some posts that are forming in my head:

• Division points as layouts. Many much better and smarter did this before me - John Armstrong in the November 1952 Model Railroader,  for one - but seeing it for myself in the old and yet still current division points of Glendive, MT and Livingston, MT really got me thinking, as it would be a great way to bring big-time passenger and freight operations onto a smaller layout, without a big classification yard.



The now-quiet Livingston Rebuild Center; formerly the Northern Pacific shops at Livingston, Montana.



The BNSF (former BN, former NP) division offices in the station building at Glendive.

• I suppose that should explain that last part, how no yard is a good thing. I don't like yard switching. (It's personal. There, I said it.)



Stuck just outside the Glendive yard, waiting to get in.

• The Black Hills offers some awesome modeling ideas. (That said, I don't think I'm the guy to tackle them. My tastes run Pacific Northwestern. I blame Spokane.)



The former FE&MV depot at Deadwood, SD. No tracks anymore, sadly.



Fortunately, the Black Hills Central made up for that. In spades. (The South Dakota State Railroad Museum nearby is a must-see, too.

• You can find trains in the most interesting places - so always carry a camera.



Ex-GN combine sitting in a field outside Fort Peck, MT.

I'll open up the comments; feel free to drop in your thoughts!

Shortline Inspiration

Eastside Freight Rail, Near Seattle, WA.

There is something to be said for shortlines.

Despite tight budgets and second-hand power, they are increasingly becoming the front-line face of American railroading. The big boys have unit trains and double-stacks, but shortlines offer something different - with creative thinking, customer service, and can-do attitude.

More importantly for a modeler - they offer several current examples of loose-car railroading on a scale a modeler can build a layout around.

The two videos offer two such examples, and many more can be found on Youtube.

So now you know what's been rattling around in my head. Now, to give these ideas some fleshing out... well, stay tuned.



Tulsa-Sapulpa Union Railway - Tulsa, OK. Love that paint scheme.

SPR: Lurching South

Scratch-Pad Ramblings:
Lurching South - The Saga of the Nevada Western

I warned you watching train videos and reading train books can be a bad idea.



Yet another train layout concept has been born; a line running from Nowhere, Nevada, to Where-in-the-heck-are-we, California.

Actually, there would be a point to this line; and, it would be connecting actual towns. I actually wouldn't be doing much grading of new line.

Ninety years ago, the railroad map of Nevada looked considerably different. (From Nevada Northern & the Railroads of White Pine County.) A plethora of exotic-sounding shortlines ran down the California-Nevada border, connecting Reno with Las Vegas: Virginia & Truckee ("Queen of the Shortlines"), Carson & Colorado, Tonopah & Goldield, Bullfrog & Goldfield, Las Vegas & Tonopah, Tonopah & Tidewater...

But connecting Nevada's two biggest cities is not the reason for their existence; at the time they were built, Las Vegas was a tiny tank town on the Union Pacific. No, these roads were built to move minerals to market. The last great American gold rush occurred in the 1900's; and they railroads were laid to the gold camps as fast as they could find the rails.

Most of the roads disappeared during or immediately after World War Two; FDR's ban on precious metal mining had destroyed the weak economies of the surviving mining towns. The V&T managed to hang on until 1950, until it, too, was scrapped.

But this free-lancing stuff is great for grim situations like this.

By a fortunate coincidence of history, the lines survived well into the late twentieth century. The oil wells near Tonopah proved more prolific than expected, and the mineral wealth of the high desert continued to fill the pockets of high desert industrialists. And explorations into the Eastern Sierra brought more - more opportunities (lumber), more traffic (more oil & minerals), and more business. And as Las Vegas grew, so did traffic from the north.

With the growth of Las Vegas into a booming business city as well as a resort destination (thanks to a business-friendly tax regime), the Western Pacific saw an opportunity for a piece of the action.
This is obviously just a developing concept, and needs a lot of work yet. But what do you think so far?

For inspiration and more information:
Nevada State Railroad Museum
Virginia & Truckee Railroad
Nevada Northern & the Railroads of White Pine County
Tonopah & Tidewater - A Study
Great Basin Research
Gordon Osmundson Photographs

Back to Scratch-Pad Ramblings.

SPR: I Need A Name

Scratch-Pad Ramblings:
I Need A Name


Photo by Chuck Donaldson at Somewhere West
Part of the fun of freelancing is developing your own railroad.

Part of the hassle is making your railroad fit into the real world, in a satisfying way. (At least, satisfying for you.)

Lately I have been on a Western Pacific kick. The WP was an interesting railroad; built in the nineteen-oughts to allow George Gould's rail conglomerate to compete with the Harriman-owned Union Pacific and Southern Pacific empire, it spent much of its life hanging on by its fingernails. But the Wobbly was an underdog you could root for.

One of the WP's quirks is, at the time of its building, its charter prevented it from building any branch lines. It was to run from Salt Lake City to Oakland without any detours. This attitude would actually make sense in modern Western railroading, as much of modern freight traffic is just passing through, between ports of entry. But in 1910, the freight traffic was resource-based, and you had to get to the traffic in order to haul it.

By 1920, this prohibition had ended, but SP and a host of small railroads already had tracks where the WP wanted to go. So in true business fashion - if you can't beat 'em, and they're smaller than you, buy 'em. In this fashion, the Sacramento Northern and the Tidewater Southern were added to the WP letterhead.

One of the facinating aspects about these subsidiary roads is that they maintained an individual identity right up to Union Pacific Marger Day. Locomotives were painted in Western Pacific paint schemes but lettered for the subsidiary road.


Photo by Jim Munding at RailPictures.Net
Now, I'm not interested (at least not this week) in modelling the interior valleys of Northern California. I want the WP to run somewhere it actually didn't, and do so realistically.

So - I'll invent my own WP subsidiary. I'm not the first to come up with this, actually. Rob Spangler did it first, with his HO scale Northern Nevada running from Elko north to Twin Falls. (See the June 1997 Model Railroader for details.)

Actually, I'm thinking I'll invent two: the Salt Lake & Western (SL&W), an unmodelled terminal road serving the Salt Lake environs (as a tip of the hat to home), and... the other.

Therein lies the problem. I envision a branchline, either running between Westwood and Susanville, CA (and possibly on to Reno), or running from Reno to points south, Las Vegas and/or Mojave and a connection with the Santa Fe. So what do I call it?

Some ideas:

Sierra Nevada (I like the sound of it, but does it seem too similar to the Sacramento Northern, a real subsidiary?)
Nevada Western
Nevada Central
Sierra Mojave
Sierra Pacific (But there are already several companies by that name)
Sierra Eastern or Eastern Sierra
Lassen & Reno

I need something railroady, but realistic. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or preference. please leave me a comment. Thanks in advance.

For More Info:
The Tidewater Southern
Ken Rattenne's Website

SPR: The Hazards Of Videos

Scratch-Pad Ramblings:
The Hazards of Videos

I recently started watching Pentrex's The Joint Line. That probably wasn't the best idea.

Now, I'm hankering to run Rio Grande, BN, and ATSF trains, rather than the Pacific Northwest roads I mentioned below in the Layout Design Journal series. I've decided I'm simply weak and easily influenced.

Plus, there's also the WP factor - the Western Pacific factor. You see, the Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific were hometown roads, scrappy underdogs against the yellow might of the Union Pacific. (The Southern Pacific was pretty much a non-factor until the D&RGW-SP merger in the late '80s, as until then it only had a presence in Ogden, which was outside my range then. Even after the merger I didn't pay much attention to it - I was mad that they were absorbing the Grande. Some of the moves involved in that merger still don't make any sense to me, such as why did the Rio Grande have to be the road that disappeared? The Rio Grande bought the Southern Pacific.) Not that it matters now - both of those roads and the once-mighty Southern Pacific have faded into a yellow blur. I never saw the WP run - something I could only make up for by modelling it, or some version of it.

But back to my lack of willpower for a moment. My model railroad roster is a reflection of my lack of modelling discipline. I can put together at least one decent train for any of a number of railroads: WP, D&RGW, SP, UP, BN, NP, GN, MILW, CPR... That's not a boast. That's an admission of shame.

And I still have videos of Beaumont Hill and the Highline to watch....

Scratch-Pad Ramblings

This is the index page for my Sketchpad Ramblings series.

The Hazards of Videos (October 3, 2005)
I Need a Name (October 11,2005)

Lurching South - The Saga of the Nevada Western (January 19,2006)