poll - modeling interests - locale

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nachoman

I'm curious. I've got this belief that most NG'ers model Colorado prototypes. Is this true? So how 'bout a little poll for the locale that each of us NG modelers is trying to emulate. I'll go first:

my railroad is attempting to depict southeastern arizona copper minging during the WWI era. My prototypes are the Coronado Railroad, the Morenci Southern, the Shannon Arizona Railraod, the Magma Arizona, and the United Verde, and Pacific. It's difficult to model an obsure railroad exactly, so I am attemting a "prototypical freelance."

Who's next?
Kevin
 
Both of my narrowgauge railroads (1 HOn30 & 1 0n30 ) are based in Michigan as modern day steam operated tourists line/common carrier railroads.
 
My On30 modeling will also have an Appalachian/eastern KY theme...That's because that's the part of the world I'm familiar with...

I know what you mean about the Colorado lines getting most of the press, & attention...seconded, possibly, by the Maine two-footers...
I think this has a lot to do with Hollywood, tourism (in that ordeer) & the fact that these line outlasted the Appalachian lines. With the exception of the East Broad Top, & the WT&ENC (the "Tweetsie") all the Appalachian NG lines that I'm aware of were either abandoned, or re-gauged to standard before 1930.
 
Simple question, messy answer.

I like Maine two-footers for their short, cute freight cars and stern Eastern architecture; their proximity to salt water; the meadowy grassiness of their right-of-ways, and the shortness of some of the lines, like the six-mile Monson.

I like the seriousness of the Colorado operations: fleets of locomotives, including heavy 2-8-2s; proper MOW equipment; the inherent, immediately understandable money-making qualities of the precious and strategic metals they hauled.

I like the tiny geared locomotives of the logging roads. I'm also a sucker for little industrial diesels and electrics.

I guess my ideal model railroad would have sub-20 ton Shays, Climax, and Dunkirks dragging 24-foot (and shorter) coal and ore gondola consists through meadows and past saltbox houses, to and from thriving industrial seaports switched by two-axle critters. I'm vaguely planning a tiny micro layout along those lines.
 
My HOn30 route depicts a ficticious low budget tourist line run on the trackage of a long defunct railroad that once connected the fishing and crabbing villages of Maryland's Eastern Shore. I simply have taken the standard gauge Maryland and Delaware Railroad and slimmed it down. All the towns served by the M&D will eventually be reproduced to one degree or another with appropriate fictional branches to the bay or oceanside of the peninsula.

There is however, this brass C&S mogul sitting on my shelf just begging to be released in its natural setting..... :rolleyes:
 

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Mine's freelanced, but based on the northwestern edge of the Black Hills in South Dakota and into southeastern Wyoming. Two prototype ng lines in particular have served as inspiration: the Black Hills and Fort Pierre Railway (owned by the big Homestake mine, trucked timber in to Lead for the mine tunnels and also trucked out waste rock) and also the Deadwood Central (connecting Lead, Deadwood and Central City). Both were in operation starting in the late 1880s and merged into the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy RR by the early 1900s. Drew's point on the Appalachian ng holds true for the Black Hills too -- all of these were gone by the 1930s.
 
My freelanced TC&W is situated 'somewhere in the Colorado Rockies'. So the answer to your question 's 50% yes (Colorado) and 50% no (prototype).

Of course my line begged, stole or borrowed quite a lot of rolling stock from the D&RGW and the RGS. :D :D :D

Ron
 
So where is the poll? As to modeling, I prefer the SP narrow gauge and Pacific Coast railroads. I guess you could throw in the N-C-O narrow gauge days too. One of my projects is of a Mexican narrow gauge caboose in On30. Colorado, not on my layout. :D

Greg
 
Mine is Soouthern Oklahoma oilfields to Texas port. Mostly oilfield, tank cars filled with crude going to Texas, with oilfield equipment and crews coming from Texas to work in the oilfield. Railroad thrown together in a hurry to get the crude out. Shays, Climax, and a Mogul. One consist to haul the crews. Proto? Only the fact that most of the early oil was hauled by rail till the pipelines were put in. Had to have Shays and Climaxs to pull the Arbuckle Mountains.
 
Wow, sounds like my old rationale that most narrow gaugers are "colorado modelers" is dead wrong, at least in this group. What a diverse group this is! Oklahoma, pacific coast, BC, SD, MI, NC, MD... I'm encouraged that the narrow gauge lines that were widespread a hundred or more years ago are still recognized.

kevin
 
Kevin,

I don't think your premise that most narrow gaugers model Colorado RR's is wrong. Just by looking at what shows up in the major modeling mag's i.e. MR, RMC, SLNGG, RMJ and MRRing, you see almost exclusively Colorado RR's. If you look at what is commerically available you will again see almost everything is for Colorado RR's.
This is one of the main reasons that when I decided to start modeling in Sn3 I made the decision NOT to put my RR in Colorado. After reading David F. Myrick's "Railroads of Nevada, vol1" I decided to model the proposed, but never built, Nevada Midland RR. It was to run between Austin and Tonopah. In my version of reality it was built and is still going strong to date (1928).
 
Hmmmmm.

My home layout is a narrow gauge line that connects somewhere in northern British Colombia with the White Pass And Yukon. This way, I can run some of literally anything, as the White Pass virtually ran the gamut of narrow gauge equipment...from ex-SV and Uintah articulateds to D&RGW K-class locos.

Then, between the region's logging and mining companies, not to mention the local NG line (and, of course, their "historical society"...), I think all the bases are covered. :D
 
As the Credit Valley Railway was the first "standard gauge" railroad in Ontario, I will only have two static lines of narrow gauge track on my layout. One where the "Hamilton and NorthWestern" crossed the CVR at Sligo Junction (now Inglewood) and one where the "Toronto Grey and Bruce" crossed the CVR at Melville Junction.

All three railroads were simple short lines doing whatever would make them money. :) Passenger, freight, transfer, you name it.
 
If i were ever to do anything in narrow gauge( and its awfully tempting with some of the new n scale offerings) It would be based on this particular scenario in northern Mn


Alger Smith took over the Tower Lumber Company, in 1908, and two years later sold it to Wirth Cook and William O'Brien in a sale that included the Gilbert tract of timber on Trout Lake. Cook and O'Brien incorporated as the Trout Lake Lumber company. The Trout Lake Lumber Company portaged their steam boat, Ojeda, into Trout Lake over a narrow gauge railway.

Cook, who was apparently an ambitious lumberman, got into a dispute over ownership of timber lands near Tower with another lumberman. In 1916, the dispute boiled over, and an angry lynch mob chased Cook to the rail yard where he dove into the baggage car of morning train to Virginia, just as it was leaving the station. Cook settled in Virginia, and formed the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company, which became the largest white pine sawmill in the world.

The Trout Lake Lumber Company had wide-spread operations. In 1917, the company constructed a portage railroad from the north shore of Lake Vermilion to Elbow Lake. The railroad was build in May and was taken up in October of that same year. That year a 37-ton locomotive was loaded onto a barge near the mill at Tower, and floated to the Elbow Lake portage. It immediately became apparent that the locomotive was too heavy for the ground that the skeleton track railroad was laid on. The tracks sank into the swampy ground when the locomotive was run across them. A smaller 25-ton locomotive was brought in as a replacement.

In 1918, the Trout Lake Lumber Company ran out of timber and the mill was dismantled. The mill site was later used by the Minnesota Box Manufacturing Company. Large scale logging operations ended in the Tower area in the 1920s. None of the large logging companies up to that time reported losing a locomotive in the Trout Lake area. How and when the wide-spread rumor about the engine in the lake started is a mystery. But whether or not a locomotive is rusting away beneath the waves of Trout Lake, the history of logging in the Tower area showed a remarkable expenditure of ingenuity and equipment. Fortunes were made, but horses, boats and sadly men's lives were lost, and maybe somewhere between the Trout Rock and the Five Sisters Islands, in the deep water of Trout Lake, there really is a lost locomotive.
Can you imagine having a short portage Railroad to haul a boatload of Logs overland 1/2 mile or so.this could be modeled in its entirety with a portage camp,turntable etc etc :)
 
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