Logging East Tennessee on the C&S RR

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Hi Doc Tom I finally made it .......very nice pictures great work
Blair,
Is that you around the electronic campfire?? Glad you made it in to this nice site.
Blair is the electronics genius of our local Clarksville Tennessee RR club. We have a lot of fun on our Wednesday PM Choo Choo night.
Here is a couple of pictures of the logging line on our club layout.
Doc Tom:mrgreen:
 

Attachments

  • Clarksvile RR.jpg
    Clarksvile RR.jpg
    180.3 KB · Views: 10
  • Clarksvile RR 2.jpg
    Clarksvile RR 2.jpg
    202.3 KB · Views: 10

Mountain Man

Active Member
Hey there ytter_man
Mayor Jimmy Joe has got a deal for you!!! In fact just send $19.99 to Mayor Jimmy Joe Rural Route 1 Stanleyville Tennessee and he will send you this great brochure outlining great mountain land buys for those looking for a little diffent lifestyle way back in country.
Doc Tom:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

I used to live at the end of a road just like that, three miles up from the hardball at 9,000 feet.

I'll take it.
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
I used to live at the end of a road just like that, three miles up from the hardball at 9,000 feet.

I'll take it.
Hey Mountain Man,
I now understand your monicker "MM". The Smoky Mountains do not reach those incredible heights!!! If memory serves me correctly I believe the highest peaks in the Smoky Mountains are between 6500 and 7000 feet.
The picture is actually a post card of the "Cumberland Gap" area another part of the Appalachian Mtn chain.
Doc Tom:wave:
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
The High Line bridge.

A passenger train, the local, is continuing its climb in to the mountains and crosses the High Line bridge over Beaver Tail Bend.
This train brings the workers and the mail to the remote lumber camps, The Fish Camp store and The Wonderland Hotel high in the mountains.
It is the lifeline to the rest of the world.
Doc Tom:wave:
 

Attachments

  • High Line Bridge.jpg
    High Line Bridge.jpg
    144 KB · Views: 12
  • High Line Bridge 2.jpg
    High Line Bridge 2.jpg
    194.2 KB · Views: 13

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Fish Camp at Summitt

The real Little River Railroad supported a company store high in the Smokies called Fish Camp. It was another "have to model" structure from the LRRR.
I modeled the Fish Camp store for my RR from foam core covered with paper printed like raw sawn lumber from my computer printer. The roof is printed paper from Paper Creek Models done on their computer and paper.
I placed Preiser figures waiting for the logging train to take them up in to the mountains. To the right of Fish Camp store is the branch line to logging camps #8 and #9.
The Fish Camp store is at the highest elevation of the C&S RR mainline at Summitt.
Doc Tom:wave:
 

Attachments

  • Prototype Fish Camp.jpg
    Prototype Fish Camp.jpg
    191.1 KB · Views: 15
  • Modeled Fish Camp.jpg
    Modeled Fish Camp.jpg
    197.3 KB · Views: 12
  • Fish Camp Front.jpg
    Fish Camp Front.jpg
    168.2 KB · Views: 11
  • Fish Camp Front 2.jpg
    Fish Camp Front 2.jpg
    195.8 KB · Views: 9

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Dr. Tom's C & S

Good Day folks, I have had the great pleasure of hanging around Dr. Tom's C&S since our little girls were four years old. Mine is a banker- Tom's is in medical school, so it's been a while. You arn't going to get a good overall shot of tom's C & S, its too dark and convolouted. in there We have had to send out search parties for operating session crews who got lost.


Tom's brother is my doctor, and I met him @ their office, we found out that we both modeled Eastern Tn. logging operations, and have been associated ever since. Dr. Tom pointed me this way, and here I bee; I'll post some photo's once I figure out the preferred size, and I'll tell ya'll about it here, cause I'm just about thirty miles down the Southern mainline


Bill Nelson

also in Clarksville Tn.
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Hey To Bill

Good Day folks, I have had the great pleasure of hanging around Dr. Tom's C&S since our little girls were four years old. Mine is a banker- Tom's is in medical school, so it's been a while. You arn't going to get a good overall shot of tom's C & S, its too dark and convolouted. in there We have had to send out search parties for operating session crews who got lost.


Tom's brother is my doctor, and I met him @ their office, we found out that we both modeled Eastern Tn. logging operations, and have been associated ever since. Dr. Tom pointed me this way, and here I bee; I'll post some photo's once I figure out the preferred size, and I'll tell ya'll about it here, cause I'm just about thirty miles down the Southern mainline


Bill Nelson

also in Clarksville Tn.
Hey Bill,
Glad you found your way on to this site. It is really very good and easy to use and post pictures to.
The Max picture size is 800X 600 and the "manage attachments" part (for posting pictures) of a post is easy to use.
Bill Nelson is a great model railroader also known as Tennessee Red Neck Logger (TRNL). He was/is a great inspiration to me and knows a heck of a lot about model railroading and logging railroads. He taught me some of the original scenery techniques seen here and can tweak a logging locomotive to perform beautifully.
I am proud to know him and hang out with him on our model RR pikes (both are Appalachian loggers) and the Clarksville Model Railroad club (see Bill's beautiful Shay and 0-6-0 on the club layout a few pictures back). It has been a fruitful friendship.
As for "operators getting lost" in the mountains of the C&S RR, the picture below illustrates one of the reasons. This little people operator stayed in the little house on the hill a little too long and missed the log train as it pulled away.
By the way Bill/TRNL because of our failing eyes I went ahead and installed 8 more flood spot lights to help with the illumination.Maybe we can find the operators that got lost or stayed too long in the little house.
Doc Tom :cool:
 

Attachments

  • Man at outhouse.jpg
    Man at outhouse.jpg
    200.7 KB · Views: 9

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
more logging two ridge lines down

Howdy Tom, Blair,

I made good my threat, and there are photos next door, of logging in Eastern Tn, on the DG CC & W RR. Catch the Southern out of Caseyville, cross over sand ridge, out of beautiful Gravestone Co, and into Glorious Gorre County, and Iron Mountain.


Y'all come,


Bill Nelson
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
Hey Bill,
Glad you found your way on to this site. It is really very good and easy to use and post pictures to.
The Max picture size is 800X 600 and the "manage attachments" part (for posting pictures) of a post is easy to use.
Bill Nelson is a great model railroader also known as Tennessee Red Neck Logger (TRNL). He was/is a great inspiration to me and knows a heck of a lot about model railroading and logging railroads. He taught me some of the original scenery techniques seen here and can tweak a logging locomotive to perform beautifully.
I am proud to know him and hang out with him on our model RR pikes (both are Appalachian loggers) and the Clarksville Model Railroad club (see Bill's beautiful Shay and 0-6-0 on the club layout a few pictures back). It has been a fruitful friendship.
As for "operators getting lost" in the mountains of the C&S RR, the picture below illustrates one of the reasons. This little people operator stayed in the little house on the hill a little too long and missed the log train as it pulled away.
By the way Bill/TRNL because of our failing eyes I went ahead and installed 8 more flood spot lights to help with the illumination.Maybe we can find the operators that got lost or stayed too long in the little house.
Doc Tom :cool:

I thionk I see the problem - your little guy is very close to a major emission source of methane gas, and it's aimed right at him! :mrgreen:
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
I think "Prayerful Gulch" might be a better name for that bridge! :mrgreen:
Great powers of observation!!! That bridge is a bit.........spindly. When it was in its cardboard and stick mockup stage operators on the C&S were always a bit hesitant to take a train over it. I think they were praying too.
But we NEVER lost a train.
Doc Tom :wave:
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Breath of Fresh Mountain Air

I thionk I see the problem - your little guy is very close to a major emission source of methane gas, and it's aimed right at him! :mrgreen:
Our engineers on the log train were also troubled by that noxious emission and with two toots on the whistle made tracks to get out of range of the offensive source.
Doc Tom:mrgreen:
 

Attachments

  • Train leaving Fish Camp.jpg
    Train leaving Fish Camp.jpg
    200.6 KB · Views: 12
  • Train leaving Fish Camp 2.jpg
    Train leaving Fish Camp 2.jpg
    201.3 KB · Views: 16

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Howdy Tom, Blair,

I made good my threat, and there are photos next door, of logging in Eastern Tn, on the DG CC & W RR. Catch the Southern out of Caseyville, cross over sand ridge, out of beautiful Gravestone Co, and into Glorious Gorre County, and Iron Mountain.


Y'all come,


Bill Nelson
Way to go Bil!!! I'm sure folks are in for a treat.
Doc Tom:wave:
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Shay #1 in the Wonderland Meadows

Traveling further East on the C&S mainline is the old reliable Shay #1. This is the original wood burning locomotive on the roster of the C&S. Modern times (1929) have given us coal fired lokies, but this little tea ketttle soldiers on using wood scraps from the sawmills back in the valley.
The scene is in the meadows just before the Wonderland Hotel at about 5,000 feet in the Smokies. Meadows and pine forests are part of the Alpine Biome at this altitude.
Fellow logger Bill Nelson is responsible for the classic good looks and the underlying redo of the mechanism of this old brass (only brass on the layout ) import. Love the lamps!!!!
Doc Tom:wave:
 

Attachments

  • Shay 1 at Meadows.jpg
    Shay 1 at Meadows.jpg
    195.2 KB · Views: 13
  • Shay at Meadows 2.jpg
    Shay at Meadows 2.jpg
    181.8 KB · Views: 8
  • Shay at Meadows 3.jpg
    Shay at Meadows 3.jpg
    181.8 KB · Views: 9

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
C & s #1

C & S #1 and I have a very long history. I met it before I knew Tom, way back in the dawn of time itself. It is a PFM Harrington shay I saw it on the shelf @ Ardvark's in Nashville, back in 1980; along with a very much larger Cherry River 3-truck monster. I tend to like the smaller lokies, and at that time my RR was tiny, consisting mainly of a 2 X 6 switching layout, which had some small shelfs sticking out of it for staging.

The Cherry river Shay was built with the traditional PFM/Uninted shay drive, with the hulking motor inhabiting the cab and the fuel bunker, and the gears on the drive wheels/line shafts had square teeth. The harrington had a very tiny moror under the fuel tank, a bizzare and complicated dive system, that left the cab wide open, allowing it to be fully detailed. It had properly beveled gears on the wheels. I wanted that Shay Badly, but it was $300.

My wife and I were newlyweds, who had just purchased a 100 year old farmhouse with no central heat, and we hadle little furnature, we had telephone wire spool tables , concrete block bookshelfs, in an otherwise empty huge house. Getting $300 budgeted for a locomotive seemed unlikely, until my wife fell in love.

Before she became a nurse, Jennifer was an insurance adjuster, and she drove a route around north middle Tennesee. There was a pet store she used to stop in, and one day she went in there, and there was an Amazon Parrot in there, who was always excited to see her, and made a big fuss when she came by. She wanted that Bird ( we already had cockatiels), but that bird cost $300!


It was middle december, and we were huddling around the wood stove (we are still huddling around the woodstove); and Jennifer came in with a clip board, where she had done some budgeting, and she had figured out that if we lived on penutbutter sandwitches and red beans and rice for a couple of months, we could affard a Shay and a Parrot, so Jennifer Got a parrot, and I got $300, and I went down to Ardvarks to get that little Shay, but it was gone! I had to buy that Cherry River Shay.


Eight or so Years Later Jennifer had Lime disease. She knew what she had, but couldn't find a doctor who would treat her for it, She ended up with Dr. Bill, Dr Tom's brother, and I met Tom through Him. We were astounded to find fellow logging modelers, neither of us knew any model train guys at all, but here we were doing exactly the same thing!

Tom's layout inhabited one stall of a two car garage, ant there was that Harrington shay! It was beautiful, but I was dissapointed in it's pulling power My # 15 a similarly sized old school PFM/Uninted Shay (a 25 T Hillcrest Shay) was much stouter.


When Tom moved to his log house in the country, and got a large basement, the little shay suddenly had a big layout! the long runs burnt up the motor in short order. He found one that would fit, and burnt it up too. It got sent to the DG CC & W RR shops for evaluation. I found a second motor, and got it installed On trials in the Gizzard it couldn't get a car up a grade #15 could push five up. Close inspection showed too much lash @ the beveled gears, so essentially one or two axles were doing all the work, and the other's teeth were missing the gear.

Efforts to fix that were unsatisfactory. when the trucks were tightenend enough to get proper gear mesh, they lost thier ability to equalize, and the critter wouldn't stay on the track, so I made a bad compromise between power and tracking, and it went back home to the C & S, where it promtly burnt out another motor, and develped a problem with a gear in the drive system. Dr Tom decided it was Terminal, and it went to the rip track by the enginehouse as a static display.

I am a glutton for punishmnet. I had built a NWSL/Keystone HOn3 shay cause I was to cheap to by a brass one ( I got one later) I snatched C & S #1; and toted it to my shops one more time. Studying the problems I concurred with Tom that the drive was shot. it needed trucks a motor and gears. The Keystone/NWSL drive was the solution. The NWSL trucks had exactly the same distance between the axles. I cut up the locomotive body, modified the frame, and replaced all of those little metric screws you can't find replacements for, with brass screws with honest english threads. after I had it together and working, it went to my paint shop and got it's paint job, including the green cab, which the locomotives on my HOn3 State Line RR now emulate.


The NWSL /Keystone modification is up there with my finest locomotive work, The modiffications to my Gem Little River 2-4-4-2, being the only thing that comes close. The NWSL mechanisn is finnicy, and needs a lot of maintenance and tweeking. Tom got tired of returning it to me for work, and dove in himself, and it has taught him a lot about mechanisms.

That hulking Cherry River shay is my #19. it is too big for my mountain division, and so it lives in the valley, delivering 10 car log trains, usually with a box car and a combine, up the 3.3% Grade to the big mill @ Crooked Creek. It has gotten a NWSL re rear kit, and is slow! @ 12 volts it takes six seconds to travel it's own length. Here is a photo of it @ Tom's bend on the North side of Crooked Creek. It's paint had to be re done, after some solder joints were repaired. and there is more work t do to it to get it up to snuff visually

Directly above the cab, is the Company store and offices building. the door you can see is the door to Dr. Gravestone's office, where he sits waiting for the next mill accident victim, or for that ambulance rail truck to come down off the mountain.

Bill Nelson
 

Attachments

  • sml#19@Tom's Bend.jpg
    sml#19@Tom's Bend.jpg
    105.3 KB · Views: 12

Mountain Man

Active Member
That is quite a story. You have some real history behind your "history", and that's a really good thing. Nice to have a friend like that, too, someone who really understands when something goes wrong with one of those beautiful locos. :thumb:
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
The History of C&S #1

Bill can really tell a story!!! And this one is all 100% true.
It brought back a lot of memories and its funny how a model train can do that.
My wife had bought me that Shay as a surprise Christmas gift way back then. It does have a special place in this guy's heart.
Bill has labored on it so many times and kept it running. Bill has a real talent with fixing locomotives and building scratch bridges (see his amazing photos on the DGCCW subforun here). He is the "go to" guy at our club for busted up lokies and spanning rivers and telling stories.
Bill will hopefully tell you all about our clever plan to quietly and deceptively turn most of the RR club into a GIGANTIC logging outfit and a chance for more pictures!!!!!!!!
Doc Tom:twisted:
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
and aside to that story!

A short story about the parrot. Paul the Parrot lived with us for 30 years, He was about 4 years old when Jennifer got him. He loved it here, as we did a lot of entertaining, and there was always something going on. Paul is a social animal. well we didn't do much entertaining when the kids were around, but there was always a string of kids coming and going, lots of action around the farm.

Suddenly we are empty nesters, Jennifer and I have turned into happy hermits, and their was nothing going on, and Paul was bored! He had always loved my wife, and been very jealous , and he got increasingly loud and obnoxious when we were together. We spent most of our interactions with him trying to get him to say "Red Wings Suck" as we are hockey fans, and the Redwings are our most prominent divisional rivals.


Over the Years Jennifer developed asthma , and determined that the bird was not good for her health, as he created a lot of bird dust, She mentioned to our daughter Emily, that she was considering donating Paul to a zoo, and Emily said "He's my big brother, you can't put him in the Zoo!" So Emily and her roomate took Paul down to houston Tx after Thanksgiving. The other day, while entertaining some of Emilys friends Paul said " Red Wings Suck"

Our house is quiet, except for the chatter of gears as #19 crawls up the grade through Tom.s Bend


Bill Nelson
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
That's all right - we've got an Amazon that uses about seven different voices, gives orders to the dogs and occassionally drives me nuts. I know how you feel.
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
The Cottages and the Wonderland Hotel

At about mile marker 22 from Railcamp and at 5,000 feet elevation the C&S mainline reaches the Wonderland Hotel and Cottages. This was a delightfully cool respite for the travellers from Chattanooga and Asheville in the summer months. It was a major destination for the C&S and hosted the tourist trains that came off the Southern RR back in Caseyville.
This is one of two areas that need scenic completion on the RR.
The pictures show some of my construction techniques including plaster soaked paper towels over a cardboard webbing, chunks of pink insulation foam, el cheapo floral moss, ground cover and some of the myriad of trees built for this RailRoad.
The Cottages are Bar Mills kits which I really love for their hilarious building instructions and ease of construction. I think they build up rather nicely and are not too costly.
The foam core mockup is a stand in for the Wonderland Hotel which I will be making from the Bar Mills kit of a two story wooden hotel.
The siding in front is for dropping off pasengers and the railroad curves aroun the hotel and heads back in to the mountains heading by way of hidden track to the most remote site on the RR...... "TVA Dam site."
Doc Tom:wave:
 

Attachments

  • the Cottages and the Wonderland hotel.jpg
    the Cottages and the Wonderland hotel.jpg
    144.5 KB · Views: 16
  • Cottages.jpg
    Cottages.jpg
    147.1 KB · Views: 13
  • turn at the Wonderland.jpg
    turn at the Wonderland.jpg
    148.6 KB · Views: 18
Top