local railroad modellers???

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stuart_canada

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Feb 12, 2005
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after reading various posts on various sites. I have one question.
does anyone actually model the railroad that runs down the street from them? or does everyone model the railroad out of province, out of state, or out of country?
I have met one guy in person who modelled the local now long gone CNR line, even had the correct houses and other buildings around the line, it was cool, nice visit to the past.
I model a leasing company. that does not exisit, so anyone here model the local home town railroad?
 
umm well i am not modeling any of the proto type scenrey on my layout yet (i have plans to some day) but i am running D&H locos which used to run right past my hous till 1994 when CP took over the line.
 
Well, not *runs*, per se, but I am modeling a railroad that *used to run* down the street--and by "down the street" I mean literally down the street--I model an industrial belt line that traversed city streets around what was originally the city of Sacramento's city limits. I don't really try to model local buildings exactly but model the structures to resemble the buildings in the area--to create a "sense" of the town more than a picture-perfect representation.
 
Well, I have one in mind that I've wanted to build for a long time that is behind my grandmothers neighborhood in Bossier City, LA. It's not really a mainline but they send mixed freights threw there sometimes when it's backed up on the other side of town close to Blanchard, LA. the KCS Deramus yard in Shreveport, LA. The line is mainly an industrial delivery line. The place I am shooting for behind the neighborhood in a concrete/asphalt construction plant with a dead end spur that splits into two spurs the dead end's with boulders as wide and almost as tall as a gondola sitting on the track's ends for bumpers. On the main is a wood deck truss bridge and a little further up is a crossing of a 4 lane non divided road with bad traffic congestion. Lot's of restraunts, business' and other thing's in the area. You could jump off the train and walk maybe not even 50 yards to Cici's pizza! I want to model it because it's the first place I ever I got operate a train. Two KCS GP-30's moving 30 gon's loaded with rock. Over time and being down on the line almost everyday I became good friend's with the crew that worked job #6. From there I've gotten to ride on the steps of a set of SW-1500's, uncoupling the cut's and working the switch. For a while I got to stay at the switch on the main with someone with me making sure when I did something I didn't get hurt. After a good 6 month's they cut me loose and I did the switch throwing by myself unsupervised when it was called for. They knew I knew how the whole switching process worked even thought sometimes it was never the same technique until I had a mishap after a repair crew came threw and didn't adjust the switch right actually making it worse after complaints from the crew's that the switch had to much pressure on it when throwing it to the siding. Well, that day I ended up down there as always not knowing the switch point's had been reset and I threw it and it was a lot harder to do being I was smaller than I am now and that throw arm popped back up and over out of it's slot and belted me across the chest almost breaking a couple rib's. It ended up turning a light shade of blue for a couple day's but I was fine so a week later one of the guy's brought me a Norfolk Southern RR ice chest and gave it to me. Along inside was a 6 pack of bottled railroad water (good stuff I still buy to this day) a KCS hat (can only be bought by the personal at the yard) and a full set of KCS safety regulation guides and manuals and the switch list of car's I moved. Very nice guy's. :thumb: I'll cherish those child/teenhood memories for the rest of my days, and this is why I want to model it so bad, but will be hard to do because I want to get as close to it as possible down to the last detail. Hardest part; finding the car's. :curse: Hertzog, RailGon, and KCS 60' gondola's have been hard for me to find. Out of all the looking I've only found one which is KCS #800007 which needed work. I put Kato SR-70 ton roller bearing trucks under it and all the details after the mounting hole's had been stripped and broke. Another place I want to model is in Troy, AL. Here is a link to some picture's from another guy who lives in the area.

http://the-gauge.com/thread9004-switching-in-troy.html

Some of the picture's show a major trucking company and you'll notice a company called KW plastic's which is mainly this railroads main customer but however KW plastic's is owned by a guy named Wiley Sanders who also owns Wiley Sanders Truck Lines who my step dad currently drive's for and who I will be driving for next year. Over the last couple of year's spending my fare share of time on the truck yard down there I've seen the two locomotive's in action. Reason for modeling is because of their association with Wiley Sanders Truck Lines and having family about 50 miles east of Troy, AL. in Dothan, AL. Reasoning for that is a whole other story. One last place I would like to model after and can't be done anytime soon do to the extremely high cost of what it would take to build in HO is the Shriners Hospital in Shreveport, LA. across the way from a double track "super" mainline running North and South along I-49 into Shreveport's major hub of multiple UP and KCS yard's and interchanges. (some used to be Cottenbelt, SP and one Mopac) The modular club I am in set's up and display's our layout at the hospital once a year around June-July for the disabled and mentally/phishically challenged children. The other two place's I mentioned to be modeled will be on my personal layout when I build it but the Hospital modeling will be for the club's layout to display. But like I mentioned before can't be done anytime soon because of the cost to build it would really hurt the pocket book for most of us. Sorry for the book I just wrote lol. I can't help it though, gotta explain thing's to understand about the other's, plus I just like to write. :D
 
We have a third bedroom that I hope will be "spare" one day. I will then model the LA Junction on a switching layout along 2 walls of that room. The LAJ is close to local in that it is located entirely in the two towns of Vernon and City Of Commerce Southeast of Los Angeles.
 
stuart_canada said:
after reading various posts on various sites. I have one question.
does anyone actually model the railroad that runs down the street from them? or does everyone model the railroad out of province, out of state, or out of country?
I have met one guy in person who modelled the local now long gone CNR line, even had the correct houses and other buildings around the line, it was cool, nice visit to the past.
I model a leasing company. that does not exisit, so anyone here model the local home town railroad?
Click to expand...

I've always wanted to model certain RR scenes from the area where I was raised in CT. When I was there(Vernon Junction), there wasn't much. Mainline, siding and a branch to Rockville. After some research and physically retracing the roadbed I realized that the junction was quite an active spot during the first part of the last century. Multiple tracks, an interlocking tower and a turntable (stone pit is still there) for turning locos from Rockville.

The junction was where the NYNH&H's double track mainline reduced down to one track in-order to get through ValleyFalls and up to Bolton Notch. I figure that the junction was somewhat of a bottleneck for trains and would make for some nice operating.

I used to model the far-away lines, but have become more interested in the local lines (lots of old RR history here in New England). Great scenery, fine examples of stone and brickwork not to mention a railroad around every corner (NE was the most RR intense area in the world at one time).

However, although I like to depict certain scenes I'm not limiting myself to any particular road. There are too many cool things from other local RRs that I'd like to incorporate, so my layout is a smorgasborg (sp) of prototypical and my own fancy set in NE, somewhere.
 
My club has built their layout loosely based on the local CNR line. the city of Kelowna on the layout has a few of the buildings that were located in the city in the 1950's but most are freelanced
 
Short answer, yes. Doesn't everyone? :)
Longer answer, my ECI (East Central Indiana) railroad is free-lanced based on local trackage and trackage in a small town that I spent my summers in. When I looked into it, I found that one of the lines running by my current residence actually was the same line that ran through the small town 80 miles south of here. Small world.

http://cid.railfan.net/eci_new.html
 
I have a little more time now, so...
I really think that most of us model the 'railroad' we are or were near. That doesn't mean that we model the specific prototype like the NYC, PC, CR or NS. We model the railroad, not the company.

Model railroading is one way of preserving the past. We model what we remember (facts may have nothing to do with it) or think we remember. In some cases, we model what we wish had been there. In my main city, there are some local businesses that are long gone, but not on my railroad. They are still there. The PRR depot that burned in the late 70s is still represented on my ECI and used by the ECI for excursions.

A number of the buildings that exist on my railroad are long gone in real life replaced by some new thing that looks like something that could be a prison. You get the idea. I am modeling my area and the railroad near me. Trackage that is long removed is now used by my railroad as we purchased it from the Penn Central.

You can call it Free-lance and it is, but it is also saving history. :)
 
Roger Hensley said:
Model railroading is one way of preserving the past. We model what we remember (facts may have nothing to do with it) or think we remember. In some cases, we model what we wish had been there.

...

You can call it Free-lance and it is, but it is also saving history. :)
Click to expand...


Roger,

Andy Sperandeo had a great quote in some MR gone by when he was relating the thrill of watching steamers from days gone by running in excursion service...

"Mine is the truest form of nostalgia - the fond memory of something never experienced..."

Andrew
 
Roger Hensley said:
You can call it Free-lance and it is, but it is also saving history. :)
Click to expand...

I feel that that those are two of the finest aspects of this hobby. Tweeking history to fit the dream, or in less elequent terms, making it up to justify its existance. Of course, the better the understanding of the history of the subject, the easier it is to make it believable.
 
What I modeled was a little of everything with an idea of personal historical make believe!

Now here is the rest of the story:
Other than riding trains as a child to see family in Ohio and traviling to Cali. on the SF in '52 to be with my father in the millitary the next greatest impact to my love for trains came when I worked as a forman at Northwestern Steel and Wire - You see they ran Steam untill the spring of '82 - At that time they totaly rebuilt one for the final run before the changover - on that day I had the pleasure of loading the last set of flats to be pulled by steam at the plant before that engine was parked forever behind the founders home - I also had the privlage of working at several other jobs that used switchers -

Now back to the point:
I am now collecting and planning to build a layout that shows a little of my own personal history with trains and with any luck some day the new layout will be my personal back yard or slice as you will of the effect that the Chicago Northwestern, CB&Q, Illinois Central and others had on me and my communitys past!
The most fun of this undertaking is the research - The things I am discovering about the old systems is staggering! This is almost better than building the layout!

As stated above that we all model from experience, we all do so but some more than others!
 
Well...I kinda used to !! I lived 1958-1982 along the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern high line in Richfield MN (actually still live there, the line was bought by Soo Line, then CP Rail, now Progressive Rail). I did set out c.1983-84 to model the MN&S, but before I got very far switched to a free lance route.

I've been working on my current version of the "St.Paul Route" since 2001, it runs from Mpls/St.Paul to Duluth/Superior, then up the north shore to what's now Thunder Bay ONT, with a line going to the Mesabi Iron Range. Right now I'm modelling Ore Bay, MN on the north shore of Lake Superior, will be putting in an ore dock.

So...at least I'm in the same state, maybe live 200+ mi. from where I'm modelling. But I will be moving in 2006, new layout may be more locally based, we'll see !! :D
 
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