This is going to call for some research. Can anyone pull up a map with ALL existing rail lines. If I can find an area, where no railroad operates, like Northern California, I could run between portland and there, and make a good sum of money. The only reason I chose this is because, I like The Oregon High Desert and want to model it. I also wish my RR could make sense. I could model a prototype, but that’s no fun. If I did that, I couldn’t have my own co. I don’t want to change where I model either. [banghead] [:(!][banghead]
I just get so envious looking at the WC, WSOR, DMIR, and the MR&T, AM, V&O etc, etc, etc. Nice locomotives, nice Paint, nice trains, intermodal traffic A STORY THAT WORKS…There has to be some demand for a bridge route in the Oregon High Desert!!![banghead] Isn’t there anything out there that teh big guys don’t serve. Mining? Grain? Should I make up some industries? I’ve already put high desert scenery on half of my train boar, so it has to work!!!
Ditch the millionaire and make it a state government buy-out. Many railroads are bought and owned by states and even (small ones) municipalities in order to preclude abandonment of a line by a class one and ensure freight haulage for on-line industries. Often times the governments hire out or lease the line to a shortline railroad for operations.
From what I read, the state of Oregon has this precise fight going on over the “Coos Bay Line”, which either BNSF or UP (don’t remember which one) wants to abandon because the cost of tunnel refurbishment is too high. Local industries have cried foul. Guess that’s not the high desert though.
Either the SP or UP or BNSF spun the line off as a short line. The shortline can’t afford to rebuild the tunnels and the class ones certainly don’t want it (which is why they sold it off in the first place).
Ya gotta have deep pockets to run a railroad in the mountains.
I think i might just use creative liberties on this one, or even better, if model railroader ever interviews me, i’'ll just say “central oregon” and not say where. After all, model railroadig is fun, and I’m stressing out trying to make this work.
Your story does exist if you go east to the modern-day successor of the Reading Railroad in the middle of Anthracite Coal: Reading Blue Mountain & Northern.
When did the real Oregon Central cease operations?? Your RR could be a “what if” railroad…“what if the O.C. hadn’t gone bankrupt in 1930 and had kept running into the eighties?” or something like that.
My “St.Paul Route” is based on two real railroads, the St.Paul and Duluth (which became part of NP in 1900) and the Port Arthur Duluth and Western (a Canadian RR that died in the Depression). In my version, they stayed independent and merged to create the St.Paul Duluth and Canadian Ry. My herald is loosely based on a real St.P.&D. advertising logo, and my passenger trains, like the Lake Superior Limited, are based on real trains the St.P.&D. ran, even using the same type of cars (LS Ltd is baggage, coach, coach, parlor, and cafe/observation, like the real one was c.1899). Even got a RR slogan from the real road “Route of the Famous Lake Superior Limited”. BUT I’m still freelancing, created my own paint scheme for the diesels and passenger cars, worked out what type of engines the real RR would have c.1950 etc.
Not all railroads and railways have to be clean to be good. My road, the Midland Gulf Railway, is a hard working line with some nice looking equipment and there’s also some equipment (two F7’s in particular) that look like they’ve never seen a wash rack since they rolled out of the paint shop. Their grimy, dirty, sooty, peeling paint doesn’t make me like them any less. In fact, they’re my primary runners for the line. Any slack is taken up by an aging but respectible looking E6 and a SD9. The line operates on track owned by the KCS and is partly owned by the KCS itself, so it’s not unusual to see some KCS power mixed in. It can be a real eye-opener to see the SD9 lashed up with a KCS de Mexico AC4400 or the E6 leading a duo of KCS SD40-2’s. It’s your world. What happens in it (believable or not) is up to you.
The beauty of model railroading is that there is no right or wrong… only difference of opinion. If you like the story you have for your model railroad then that’s it. Who am I to say “that couldn’t happen”?
Look at the story “Forrest Gump”, could all of that actually hapen to one man in one lifetime? Maybe not, yet the story still exists.
However… when I first read your post and saw the word Kramerton, I thought of this:
I too have a story (6 to 7 pages in Word format) that involves a similar situation. My railroad was started by the transportation needs of an ever expanting factory that was owned by one man in 1902.
