My freelanced model railroad, the _K_ramerton _B_oise _C_entral is supposedly a shortline operating over a fictional line that was spun off by a Class I railroad. The industries got angry, and appealed to a multimillionaire who started a railroad for them, which served the industries, and did long haul. I like my story, but would a shortline be able to make any money on a line, connecting Portland OR to Boise ID, or would there be too much competition. Does my story make sence?
acualy it don’t
Hmm…
This sounds more like a regional than a shortline. An explanation that would be plausible would be that your line is a regional spin-off of some of the redundant trackage in the Pacific Northwest as BN took over NP, GN, and SP&S… and yes, with less overhead, a regional could conceivably compete with the big boys. Generally such spin-offs were encouraged by the Class Is, because it would generate interchange revenue with no overhead. Local industries or local government might help the new spin-off get on its feet, but the multi-millionaire buying the railroad on behalf of the industries is a stretch. Most of the time, wealthy folks who buy railroads buy them for themselves (like RJ Corman). Certainly IAIS does well in spite of BNSF and UP. Perhaps there’s some new industry on your line that gives it an edge.
The name sounds a bit awkward to me, though it seems as if the initials KBC bear significance and so must be accomodated. Just plain “Boise & Western” might be a more “railroady” name that conveys the essence of your railroad.
This could be fun… Lots of names come to mind:
Oregon-Washington-Idaho Railroad
Northwest Regional Rail
Idaho Rail Link
Portland and Eastern
Portland & Boise
Or, if Kramterton is the name of your multimillionaire, take RJ Corman’s example and just slap “Kramteron” on everything.
Enjoy!
Is there an Oregon Central Yet?
Nope, google search just turns up lots of tourst stuff an pictures of Rock formations
I’m guessing KBC is your initials, right? I though about doing an RR with mine, but couldn’t find a northwestern city that started with a V.
No, KBC are not my initials, but I nicknamed our house Kramerton, and I was 12 when I named my railroad, and I want a new lettering Scheme. Oregon Central it is. Is there a railroad with theReporting Marks, ORC (ORegon Central). Also, when I reletter them, should I subletter them, KBC?
Those reporting marks bring to mind fantasy locomotives driven by evil soldiers from Middle Earth!
That’s Funny!![(-D] No really, do you have a better idea for Oregon Central?
I know, I know!!! The Shiretown, Hobbiton and Rivendale! [:D] You could even name your engines and passenger cars, i.e. “The Prancing Pony”, “White Tower”, “Lothlorian”, etc.
KBCpresident, this thread will never be the same. [:P]
One does not simply steam into Mordor!
have you seen those mountains? gonna need some helpers.
Unfortunatly, the Oregon Central did exist, you just didn’t look hard enough.[:(!] Oh well back to the drawing board…[:(!]
Mustve been a thrifty railroad, only a millionare was asked to provide a railroad to industries that already had service no longer being served by the class 1?
My head hurts.
Name your railroad whatever it is you want to, the story is something nice to work with and invent, but all peices must kind of fit together.
There was a contract signed to build a dam 30 miles up river from the town to provide hydroelctric power. There was a quarry on the town’s south end that will provide the materials for the new Dam. Unfortunately the motor vehicles of the late 30’s did not have the capacity to haul stone in sufficient quanities without hiring a excessive number of paid drivers. So, a Railroad was determined to be built that will get the dam finished on time and under budget.
That is a small easy story. Railroads tend to grow like many different ways from one simple place at point A that had something something needing to go to point B.
Cheers.
I kinda like this name here that Dave V suggested. You could even get inspiration from the Montana Rail Link scheme and drop that hideous yellow, blue, green and red (god ugly) color scheme that you have going now.
And why is that? Be specific.
It is not unheard of to resurrect a dead railroad name, sometimes with slight variations. For instance, if the Oregon Central Railroad did exist, yours could be the Oregon Central Railway, Oregon Central Rail Services, Oregon Central Rail Transport Company, etc.
Railroad histories are varied and usually simple. Yes, I do think your millionaire entrepreneur makes sense. He may have started small and grew the railroad from there. Or, he may have tapped other silent investors (R.J. Corman?) and put the whole line back in operation at one time. It’s your railroad and your history. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.
For what it’s worth, my shortline, the Cedar Branch and Western, started life as narrow gauge lumber line which was regauged and sold to the Missouri Pacific. The Missouri Pacific sold it to a private company in 1968 and the CB&W was formed. That’s why the grades are so steep, the turns so sharp, the line only serves three real towns, and the Mopac still puts in an appearance. It also explains the big Weyerhauser plant and the abundance of log and lumber products.
Actually, Norfolk Southern was the name of a very small regional in eastern Virginia and North Carolina… It was majority owned by the Southern Railway, so when it merged with the Norfolk and Western, they applied the name to the whole shootin’ match… Kind of reverse of what we’re talking about here…
Another possible scenario would be that the line limped along and went into bankruptcy in the 1970’s, and emerged with a slightly different name… Oregon Central RailROAD might come back to life as the Oregon Central RailWAY. That’s what happened with the Western Maryland back in 1910 or so. The reporting marks might change from OCRR to OCRY.
Lee
The answer to that can be found on the side of boxcars, “…ship Union Pacific.”
The only railroad that serves Boise longhaul is UP. the UP also runs directly to Portland. the UP won’t intentionally give any traffic to the KBC at either end so the chances of bridge line traffic is pretty much non-existent. That would pretty much limit the KBC to local traffic or interchange from the BNSF routed east via the UP from Boise.
The route from Portland to Boise covers some very tough terrain. Tough enough that there are no parallel routes. Would the costs incurred by the KBC to maintain and operate that line be covered with a limited traffic base of at most a hundred cars a day? Probably not.
So if the question is, would a real KBC make money, take a look at the CORP. They had a similar line which operated until they had to make a substantial investment in the physical plant (tunnels collapsed), which they were unable to afford, so they are abandoning the line. The KBC might make money until a bridge, tunnel or rock slide closed it, then it would be toast.
I would see a “real” KBC as concentrating on hauling originating business, primarily lumber, to either Portland or Boise for interchange with the long haul carriers with little if any bridge traffic.
Having said that, you can do what you want and make up any scenario you wish for your layout. Nothing requires a model railroad to make sense financially.
Dave H.
I’ve made my own story:
Once upon a time there was a little town which the big railroads had forgotten. But the residents of this town wanted a railroad, too. So they decided to build one of their own. This small railroad saw good times and bad times, its owners and names changed. Some made good profit and others lost money and even went bankrupt…
The History of Westport Terminal RR
Wolfgang
My railroad’s story is this…
In the 70’s and 80s the traffic on the Guilford/B&M line from Concord, NH to White River Jct, VT had little traffic. Then there was a major washout in the pass over the White Mountains. B&M filed to abandon the line. The state of New Hampshire purchased it and created a railroad to run it. This railroad was called the White River Southern Railroad (reporting marks WRS). The state funded a new alignment to bypass the washout-prone area, and also to rehabilitate the exsisting track.
Today, the railroad survives as a bridge line serving the local industries out of yards in Concord and White River Jct. The line from Concord, NH south to Nashua via Manchester is now owned by a shortline as well, which along with the WRS forms an alphabet-route-like line from Nashua (and surrounding lines) to White River Jct, eventually to Montreal on other railroads.
Welcome to the double-F world of freelancing - fascinating and frustrating.
Allen McClelland’s V&O and Tony K’s AM and the late John Armstrong’s Canandaigua Southern are examples of freelanced railroads which were geographically oriented for inclusion into the national rail scheme; on the other hand John Allen’s G&D and Frank Ellison’s Delta Lines were purely speculative as to where they were located. <Please: I am aware that John Allen was from California and that the Akinback Mountains are - theoretically at least - located in the Western regions of North America; so also Frank Ellison was a resident of Nar’lins and therefore his Delta Lines can be presumed to be representative of the lower Mississippi Valley - although you have to really speculate as to where those tunnels came from.>
In your - and mine also, for that matter - case if we are going to try to fit our railroad into the national rail scheme we must come up with a plausible explanation for where it goes and why it goes there.
My Seaboard and Western Virginia Railway runs from a fictitious Port Chesapeake in the vicinity of Gloucester Point, Virginia and then roughly parallels the C&O/CSX across Virginia into the Shenandoah Valley before striking Northwestward across West Virginia and spilling out into the Lake Plains of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois after crossing the Ohio River somewhere to the south of Wheeling and north of Parkersburg. It is predominantly a coal hauler from mines in the vicinity of Elkins, West Virginia but it does service a manufacturing base in the tidewater/Piedmont region of Virginia as well as in the states of the Midwest. It does convey a certain amount of bridgeroute traffic through its Chicago and St Louis connections.
You are trying to rationalize a regional railroad running from the Willamette Valley across Central Oregon to the Boise Valley. You obviously cannot use t