Logging East Tennessee on the C&S RR
- Thread starter Doctor G
- Start date
You guys are a lucky pair.....Two gorgeous layouts, and a sackful of stories to go with them....I guess you'd call them layouts with soul....of which there are few and far between. Dr. Wayne's come to mind as well....
Keep those pictures and stories comin'....
Keep those pictures and stories comin'....
Hey Bill,
I will be using the Bar Mills "IDAHO HOTEL" kit. It is one of the few "wood frame" Hotel Kits I could find and is a pretty close representation of the real Wonderland Hotel at Elkmont in the Smokies. Kit and I stayed there a year or so before they closed down.
Doc Tom
Thanks Blair. I need to get organized and restart the operating sessions this winter for you guys.
Doc Tom:mrgreen:
Thanks Steamhead,
We do have a lot of fun with these RR's and our club layout. I too love Bill's yarn swapping and story telling. He is a tremendous wit and very generous with his time and talents.
Doc Tom
Back in the 70's there was a little industrial railroad in Georgia, that was constructed to build a dam on the Chattahoochie. After the dam was built The Chattahoochie industrial RR lived on lived on serving industry that located by the dam.
Their moto " Better by a damsite!"
Bill Nelson
Their moto " Better by a damsite!"
Bill Nelson
"Better by a Dam Site"
This is another 100% true story by my colleague logger Bill Nelson.
In fact when I sold off my Dad's N scale collection after he passed away I did sell a CIRR car on eBay.
Here is some photo documentation of the RR that was "Better by a Dam Site"
Doc Tom
This is another 100% true story by my colleague logger Bill Nelson.
In fact when I sold off my Dad's N scale collection after he passed away I did sell a CIRR car on eBay.
Here is some photo documentation of the RR that was "Better by a Dam Site"
Doc Tom
Attachments
TVA Dam Site on the C&S RR
Well, we have finally gotten to mile marker 30 high in the Smokies above RailCamp where we started this adventure.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has done a lot to modernize Tennessee.
Here we see construction of a dam on the Beaver Bend Branch of the Ocoee River being built by TVA. This dam will channel the head waters of the Ocoee into a wooden flume that will carry the flowing waters along the upper edge of the Ocoee Gorge. After 5 miles the flume will be about 500 feet above the river and will there turn down to a power house 500 feet below and spin its turbines to generate electricity. The water is then returned to the Ocoee completing the circuit.
To help in this incredible endeavor, TVA has hired the C&S RR to transport the crushed rock, cement, coal for the primitive cement mixer, and the workers constructing the dam and the flume.
The first set of pictures show the required posting of a Federal Sign, a Class A Climax shoving crushed limestone to be dumped in to the fill of the center of the dam and the cement cars taking fresh cement to pour in to the forms of the dam.
Notice the Dead Grass Crooked Creek and Western Hopper from Bill Nelson's nearby DGCC&W RR with a load of fine coal for the steam powered cement mixer.
Doc Tom
Well, we have finally gotten to mile marker 30 high in the Smokies above RailCamp where we started this adventure.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has done a lot to modernize Tennessee.
Here we see construction of a dam on the Beaver Bend Branch of the Ocoee River being built by TVA. This dam will channel the head waters of the Ocoee into a wooden flume that will carry the flowing waters along the upper edge of the Ocoee Gorge. After 5 miles the flume will be about 500 feet above the river and will there turn down to a power house 500 feet below and spin its turbines to generate electricity. The water is then returned to the Ocoee completing the circuit.
To help in this incredible endeavor, TVA has hired the C&S RR to transport the crushed rock, cement, coal for the primitive cement mixer, and the workers constructing the dam and the flume.
The first set of pictures show the required posting of a Federal Sign, a Class A Climax shoving crushed limestone to be dumped in to the fill of the center of the dam and the cement cars taking fresh cement to pour in to the forms of the dam.
Notice the Dead Grass Crooked Creek and Western Hopper from Bill Nelson's nearby DGCC&W RR with a load of fine coal for the steam powered cement mixer.
Doc Tom
Attachments
More Dam pictures
TVA Dam site is at the "end of the line" for operations on the C&S mainline. There is hidden trackage under the layout that connects with the "Three Bridges" area to allow continuous running for visitors and to break in locomotives.
Here we see the "action" of turning rock, cement and water into a dam in a remote corner of God's green earth.
Notice the closeup of Bill Nelson's DG CC&W hopper car......."The Bent River Route."
More photos to come of the "branclines" up in to the mountains.
Doc Tom
TVA Dam site is at the "end of the line" for operations on the C&S mainline. There is hidden trackage under the layout that connects with the "Three Bridges" area to allow continuous running for visitors and to break in locomotives.
Here we see the "action" of turning rock, cement and water into a dam in a remote corner of God's green earth.
Notice the closeup of Bill Nelson's DG CC&W hopper car......."The Bent River Route."
More photos to come of the "branclines" up in to the mountains.
Doc Tom
Attachments
I built that car back in the 70's for a friend who modeled a more modern era than I did. He switched to O scale, and the car came back to me. I think it was the only steel car with DG CC & W reporting marks (I got lots of MDC shorty flats in logging service, but they don't carry reporting marks-primarily due to lazyness)
No lazyness on this car, I even did the car data. The Herald I traced over typing correction paper. I don't think I've done that herald since 1975!. most of the cars that carried it have been re shopped. In any case that car has been in continual service on the C & S fot the the last 20 years.
Bill Nelson
No lazyness on this car, I even did the car data. The Herald I traced over typing correction paper. I don't think I've done that herald since 1975!. most of the cars that carried it have been re shopped. In any case that car has been in continual service on the C & S fot the the last 20 years.
Bill Nelson
Diversion Dam on the Ocoee River
I originally conceived of the idea for a "diversion dam" for the C&S when looking for excuses to run different types of freight cars on the C&S.
I recalled that RR's helped build dams all over the country and would need hoppers and box cars to haul cement and rock to build a dam.
In the East Tennessee mountains the Ocoee river had just the type of diversion dam I was thinking would be pretty neat tucked away on a mountain river. I saw the real one as a kid and was impressed enough to try and model it in "old age."
Here's a little article about the flume system used to divert the water:
“THE FLUME LINE”
If you have never seen the Flume it may be hard to imagine. It is a wooden trough roughly measuring 14’ X 10’. This trough was 4.7 miles long from the Diversion Dam to the Powerhouse…yet it falls only 17 feet in that distance. The River drops over 250 feet in elevation. The force of the water falling is the secret behind its ability to generate. The flume was built of yellow pine from the forests of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee…using just over eight million board feet of lumber. In 1910 little heavy equipment was available to carve a 20’ wide level section almost 5 miles long out of the side of a cliff side of a mountain with a rushing river sometimes hundreds of feet below. Building of iron trestles for bridges & framing wasn’t a simple task either. Mules, wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, dynamite were the tools of the times. Manpower being the most important one of them all.
Thanks for looking!!!
Doc Tom:mrgreen:
Hey Mountain Man,
I originally conceived of the idea for a "diversion dam" for the C&S when looking for excuses to run different types of freight cars on the C&S.
I recalled that RR's helped build dams all over the country and would need hoppers and box cars to haul cement and rock to build a dam.
In the East Tennessee mountains the Ocoee river had just the type of diversion dam I was thinking would be pretty neat tucked away on a mountain river. I saw the real one as a kid and was impressed enough to try and model it in "old age."
Here's a little article about the flume system used to divert the water:
If you have never seen the Flume it may be hard to imagine. It is a wooden trough roughly measuring 14’ X 10’. This trough was 4.7 miles long from the Diversion Dam to the Powerhouse…yet it falls only 17 feet in that distance. The River drops over 250 feet in elevation. The force of the water falling is the secret behind its ability to generate. The flume was built of yellow pine from the forests of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee…using just over eight million board feet of lumber. In 1910 little heavy equipment was available to carve a 20’ wide level section almost 5 miles long out of the side of a cliff side of a mountain with a rushing river sometimes hundreds of feet below. Building of iron trestles for bridges & framing wasn’t a simple task either. Mules, wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, dynamite were the tools of the times. Manpower being the most important one of them all.
Thanks for looking!!!
Doc Tom:mrgreen:
"By the way"
Forgot to mention that the TVA Dam Site is the second "unfinished" section of the model RR. Note there is no plastic "water" in the rushing Ocoee River.
Doc Tom:cry:
Forgot to mention that the TVA Dam Site is the second "unfinished" section of the model RR. Note there is no plastic "water" in the rushing Ocoee River.
Doc Tom:cry:
I do like your inclusion of prototype photos. It may not be immediately obvious to the casual observer, but it shows just how effective the practice of observing the prototype, before modeling it, can be, in making the model scene so much more real.
Keep up the good work!
Keep up the good work!
Hi Sumpter,
Part of the fun for me is the actual history. The internet is such a great tool to help get prototype pictures to help increase the accuracy of the models.
Lately I have begun posting prototype pictures on the fascia near the areas modeled. I started doing this first because logging locomotives are a bit weird to the untrained visitor used to "Casey Jones" and the stereotypical high stepping rod engines. Second to help answer the" awww come on did they really run trains in river beds and over bridges made of logs with extremely steep grades???" type of questions. And third to give my fellow Tennesseans a sense of the rich history that took place here.
Glad you like the effect!!!!
Doc Tom:thumb:
