Sorta…I used a rubbing of the Indian’s head on an American nickel, but reversed the image before re-defining the features in solid black. I also liked the medallion shape for displaying the railroad’s name in a border around the silhouette.
The first ones were made in dry transfers, with the large herald in white and a separate black background. The smaller versions were white only, with no black background…
…although I later used painted-on black backgounds with the small heralds used for reefers…
…but later, when I backdated my layout to a late '30s era, I chose to forego both the large heralds and the “Way of the Warriors” slogan.
Since my freelanced railroad was supposedly in the area around Ontario’s Grand River (it flows through the real Elora Gorge, on its way to Lake Erie), I made the slogan a tribute to the indigenous population of this area, as there’s a large Six Nations reservation nearby. So,e of my passenger cars got either tribal names or names of renowned members of those tribes, again in tribute.
The profile from the nickel is more well-suited to the local styles, than would be, f’rinstance
For me that answer is simple enough… I started being a short line fan when MR ran a “A Railroad You Can Model” The Abedeen & Rockfish article. This gave birth to my love of freelancing short lines or terminal switching roads. Then MR’s A Railroad You Can Model "Progressive Rail’s Airlake Industrial Park Operation article give birth to my still borned Deer Creek Railroad.
However, the thought of PR’s Airlake operation stayed fresh in my mind. The first Slate Creek Industrial Park was in N Scale and was a C&HV operation then came Bachmann’s GE 70T and Huron River RR was born to switch Slate Creek, then came the Summerset Ry SW1500 that took over Slate Creek operation… A LL P2K SW8 was painted in SCR and used for some time but, Summerset Ry would not fade away. Today SS Ry is my main road with SCR second.
The HR GE70T is history due to crack gears and me dropping the shell that broke several pieces off. A BB SW7 stands ready as a replacement when I decide to decal it. I might even abandon the HR since I’ve been toying with a new terminal switching road the Sandusky Terminal Ry set in 1964. Time will tell how far this idea gets.
I do have several CR,NS and CR locomotives that can be used to switch Slate Creek when I get the urge to use one of those roads.
There have been some very impressive free lanced roads over the years. Gorre & Daphetid, V&O, Allegheny Midland, Utah Belt, and others come to mind. One attraction of free lancing; the name on the locomotive and cars is yours and yours alone. Pride of ownership does good things toward motivating the model railroader to do some modeling and railroading. The other nice thing about free lancing is that you can pick locomotives and rolling stock as you please. For instance, I love Alco hood units, ever since receiving a Lionel AA set for Christmas many years ago. My Boston & Maine prototype never owned any. B&M had a fair crop of Alco road switchers, but no hood units. I occasionally run my Missouri Pacific painted Alco hood units just 'cause I like them but they ain’t very prototypical. Hey, it’s a hobby.
The Bayfield Transfer Railway is a freelance railroad based off a historical idea:
What if, instead of the SOO spinning off Wisconsin Central in the 80s, the CNW had spun off some of its lines in the same area instead?
So I run from Ashland, WI, where I interchange with the CNW, the Soo, and the BN – all of which served Ashland in the mid 80s – to Iron Mountain, MI where I interchange with the Milwaukee, the CNW, and the Escanaba and Lake Superior, again which served Iron Mountain. I get to do the Milwaukee F units swapping ore trains with CNW C-628s in Iron Mountain, but I also get to have a BL-2 because nobody gets to say what locomotives the BTR had except for me.
Well if running G&D and other cars from the NMRA Heritage and Living Legends count then I guess I’m a free lancer as well, even though I’m loosely following the Ma&Pa.
Only the GD car is from the NMRA commemorative series.
The V&O car was painted and lettered by me using an original set of V&O decals I acquired in an auction lot. The NMRA V&O car was a company service tank car.
The AM car is from Fox Valley Models, and has the distinction of being the ONLY freight car I own that runs exactly as it came out of the box. FVM really did a great job on that model.
The UB car is a Yarmouth Models kit that I painted and lettered with alphabet decals, but it was easy… there are only eight letters in UTAH BELT!
I do own the entire NMRA Heritage Collection, and probably 5 or 6 of the Living Legends Collection, but the finish and detail on many of them is poor, so they are not going to see much service.
Here is my storefront with Gort’s Lasers. I am seriously thinking about two changes: Change from N Scale to HO, and getting a camera. I like scratchbuilding, but at my age, HO might be a better fit. My camera is an old cell phone that no longer works.
I have a loading dock door in a back corner labelled Mom’s Robot Oil, and a warehouse also in that corner named Drosophila and Melanogaster Wholesale Fruit, after the Latin name for the fruit fly.
I’ve never had much interest in science fiction or super heros, but GERN Industries, my brother’s creation, dates back to the mid-'50s. It was much later when I finally got around to building a model of it…
It’s a great traffic generator for the railroad, and takes-up only 6’ of layout space.
I would not want to trample upon any set standard for expanding the GERN family of industries or North American footprint, but I feel compelled to disclose to the creator (small c) my desire for establishing an expansion of GERN into northern Georgia.
There is a local oil recycler not too far from my abode that I plan on including on the layout.
Of course, in my free lanced world (maybe leaning into proto lance) that industry would be the 2010-ish Georgian site of GERN Flux Recycling.
