Since we have discuss modern shortlines let’s look at the older short lines.
In the mid to late 1800s every small town and city wanted rail service so the communities would petition big railroads to build through their cities and towns however some times a major railroad may have not been interested and bypast that city or town or in some case flat refused to build a branch line to that city or town…So local businessmen would decide they will build a railroad to serve their communities and would seek financing from banks,investment companies,stocks to build their railroad.
These short lines would haul general freight or perhaps be tied to a industry such as veneer lumber,stone,fire clay,pulpwood,coal,lumber mills,lumber finishing mills(not logging operation) and other such industries.As these natural resources dried up so did the bulk of the short line business and these roads fell on hard times and most cease operations within 20 years after they was built never having made a profit due to paying off loans and operation costs…Of course the coming of automobiles,trucks and paved roads killed what freight and passengers they had left.
Also during this same time period there was several strong short lines built that flourish and are still in operation today.
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For these type of short lines I would prefer a low driver 2-6-0,2-6-2 2-8-0 or 4-6-0 and model the 30s or for a stronger short line into the 50s and maybe have a GP7 or RS1 or RS3…Passenger service would be the daily mixed train regardless of era.
This operation would be straightforward after switching our train into town and industry order we would couple onto the combine at the station load passengers-if any-and whistle off switching industries as we go and leaving LCL freight from the combine at the stations along the way and perhaps pickup cream and milk at the “milk” stations along our route which maybe no more then 2-3 farmers waiting at a grade
I’ll be very interested to see where this thread goes.
Personally, I made up a very typical history for a short line in Oregon that follows the pattern you described. But, many of these short line promoters and engineers had agendas and visions that went way beyond creating service from their town to the nearest Class 1 railroad. Such is the case with the Picture Gorge and Western Railway. Created to tie Tillamook Bay with the railways of the Willamette Valley, it always had a hankering to cross the Cascades and follow the John Day River to Eastern Oregon (hence the name). Then someday…push through Idaho and the Rockies and join up with another line to become a transcontinental. Of course, Tillamook Bay and the coastal towns never put up the money to go beyond the Willamette Valley, but the dream was always there.
It turns out my fictional short line parallels quite closely the real history of the Oregon Pacific, which I learned about after developing the Picture Gorge and Western.
I prefer to model the busier and heady, exciting days in the short line’s life - sometime between initial construction and WW1. I ended up choosing 1900 for a variety of reasons.
I wanted to have a narrow gauge link. Narrow gauge, for the most part, was on an economic decline by 1900, mainly because of the interchange issue. Where it was economically successful, it was usually widened to standard gauge no later than the early 1900s in Oregon and California.
I wanted to have sailing ships in my port. The last of the Pacific Coast dog hole schooners were being replaced by steam around the turn of the century.
I wanted to use knuckle couplers. Knuckle couplers became standard in the late 1890s.
When I started, modeling the 1880s reasonably accurately in HO took lots more skill than I posess. Locomotives for the 1880s (built 1870s and 1880s) were much harder to come by than fo
Fred,What makes it interesting and some what sad a lot of the early short lines was doomed from the start because they had no rational freight base but,depended on (well let’s say) finish lumber and after the trees was harvest for lumber and the mill closed there was no more business.
When I read Elmer G. Sulzer’s book Ghost Railroads Of Kentucky I was surprise that there was so many abandon short lines in Kentucky.Some such as the Owensburg & Olympia should had never been built…Yet their 4-4-0 made its daily round trip hauling passengers and some lumber.
With Northwestern lumber railroads, with a few exceptions such as the Skunk, the railroad just went in and out and took the rail and ties with them. After that it was just a matter of tying to the main or floating down the coast.
The Skunk existed because the people of Fort Bragg wanted to connect to the rest of the world. So they wiggled through the mountains to Willits and joined the Northwestern Pacific. That railroad was more like your description, but they have managed to stick around because they send steam through the redwoods for tourists.
Chip,Let’s see if we are on the same track since lumber roads can also mean logging roads…I was talking about a short line that carried the finish lumber from the mill to the connection with the big class 1s.Of course with the demise of the lumber traffic came the demise of the short line.That happen to the aforemention O&O.The venteer lumber traffic cease to exist and shortly there after the mighty 6 mile long O&O cease operations…The track remain in place for several years and I believe the O&O station remains to this day.
My own favorite northcoast shortline, the Arcata & Mad River, didn’t connect to a Class 1 until very late (and that’s only if you consider the NWP to have been a Class 1.) They served as a common carrier, carrying the output of various smaller logging lines from the mills, as well as other general freight, to the waterfront at Arcata Bay, as well as transporting goods brought in by ship to Arcata, surrounding communities, and the mills. Due to the relative lack of heavy industry in the area, and the utter lack of rail service to the outside world, the A&MR was a vital link for the community.
My other favorite shortline, the Sacramento Northern, began as a couple of electric interurbans which later became a dieselized freight railroad serving as an interchange/feeder line for Western Pacific. The electrics were purchased new, and were generally small. The diesels were, aside from a scattering of GE 44 and 70 tonners, all Western Pacific hand-me-downs except for some F3s purchased for a special-purpose “SN Detour” train over the AT&SF mainline, initiated after a trestle collapse which closed the SN mainline.
It is interesting to discuss these older shortlines. Here in New England there have been a number of shortlines doing exactly as Brakie says. But the interesting thing is that some “wise” individuals used narrow gauge equipment to accomplish this. In Maine I am aware of one railroad devoted entirely to bringing coal and freight 3 miles to a hospital for our government. On the coast another narrow gauge had two engines and transported freight and granite from the quarries to the mainline. And the one that I find fascinating is the Sandy River and Rangley Lakes, I often ride my Mt bike on the abandoned lines and search for the old sites when I visit the town of Strong and Rangley or Carrabasett. The movie theater in our town of Farmington embraces this history, the theater is built on the site of the narrow gauge interchange with the Maine Central and in the lobby is a “map” of the lines from Farmington to the various end points. To me these are examples of our recent past and how the railroads dealt with the challanges thrown at them. The history of the shortlines are much more fascinating reading at times then that of the class 1 railroads. Thank you for starting this thread Brakie.
We are inclined to think of the State of Colorado when we think of narrow gauge railroading but I remember reading somewhere - I believe it may have been in an NMRA Bulletin - some years back that that distinction probably should go to Iowa! Iowa??? According to this monograph more narrow gauge corporate entities existed in the state of Iowa and more narrow gauge trackage was built there than in any other state. These lines were not quite as dynamic as Colorado narrow gauge which is why they remain largely shadowy to most railfans as well as model railroaders.
Some of these corporate entities were little more than industrial spurs serving a solitary industry sometimes in a town or village - sometimes not. Most were built, this monograph expounded, because the city fathers in the community or the owners of the industry being served were unable to interest management of a nearby Class 1 to invest in a spur to that location. In at least one situation the Class 1 came down the opposite bank of the river and the railroad informed the city fathers that if they wanted rail service to their community they would have to foot the bill for a bridge; this raised hackles and the city fathers raised a bond issue and built a shortline twelve miles across country to connect with another Class 1. A railroad bridge had, this monograph attested, never spanned the river at this particular location. It did not say whether the railroad still existed or not.
I know that your post does not directly refer to narrow gauge railroading but (most of) these narrow gauge lines within the state of Iowa were short lines by their very nature. Most of these lines, as you point out in your post, aspired to eventually be included within the national railroad network; some did attain this goal, were standard gauged and were deemed to be economically successful to their owners; a good many of the others, however, ran out of steam an
While some narrow gauge locos were pretty big - as with the SAR NGG16 Class, 2-6-2 + 2-6-2 2’ gauge Beyer-Garrats - the main reason that many lines around the world were built to narrow gauges was because it was advocated as a “lower cost” way of getting started.
In most cases the smaller stock of the smaller lines were comfortable with more terrain hugging tracks that required less expenditure in civil engineering. Even the cuts and fills for narrow gauge are smaller so they save on cost. A line would even tend to wiggle around the hill on a small step rather than take the short route of cutting through it.
When (if) traffic grew and proved the value of a line it might be deemed worth changing it to standard gauge. There were two reasons… the traffic was there… and, until a change was made, the cost of transhipment was there.
Although there were no great engineering challenges it was pretty uncommon for railroads/railways to go down the path of using transporter cars to give access for cars of a different gauge.
A period of mixed gauge did occur at times. This made for some interesting track.
Sometimes the formation was widened, longer ties were put in and then one rail was moved out to the new gauge on a given day - or two. Other times the ties were replaced, a new (usually heavier) wider gauge rail was installed progressively along the route and, eventually the middle rail fell out of use. the RR then had a choice. Depending on funds they could change the NG rail still in use to the new larger rail or they could get its life out of it and then switch the middle rail across to replace it and get the work out of that rail. If business was really booming they could of course replace both rails that would be standard gauge and leave the narrow rail down the middle for a time. Things get interesting when you come to sidings, especially those with loading docks. Do you wiggle the line around t
Converting narrow gauge to standard gauge was what happended with the Ma&Pa. It’s predecessors were narrow gauge. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the modeler, they did not have the resources to redo the road. So they had to live with sharp curves, narrow cuts, and trestles.
Looking at older shortlines, I find it fascinating all the differences that existed. The Chesapeake Beach Railway was built to run from Washington, D.C. to Chesapeake Beach on the bay - a resort the railroad built to attract passengers. It was a well built line for 1900. The line ran several passenger trains a day in the summer, but had very little freight. The railroad declined seriously after WWI with the coming of the automobile and went out of business in 1935 except for a three mile remenant at the D.C. Maryland line which lasted into the 80’s mainly hauling coal to a power plant.
Then there’s the W&OD that was primarily a commuter line that struggled for over 100 years and at different times had steam, interurban, diesel, and finally ended it’s days in the 60’s after hauling building materials for Dulles Airport.
And there was the East Broad Top railroad that got around the trans ship problem by swapping narrow gauge trucks for standard gauge ones. They also had steel hoppers.
One of the things that kept a lot of the shortlines passenger business going for years beyond their normal end was the mail contracts. WWI was a dividing line for the passenger business. Prior to WWI the Ma&Pa ran about 8 passenger trains a day and passenger revenue was significant. Also the milk business was an important source of revenue. After WWI both declined quickly and only the mail kept it going. The Ma&Pa ran passenger trains until August 1954 when they lost their mail contract. This in turn led, in 4 years, to the abandonment of the Maryland half of the railroad.
there were probably hundreds if not thousands of little railroads named (name of 1st town) , (name of 2nd town) and Pacific . or Atlantic . many of them never got much farther than from town 1 to town 2 , and a lot of them never even made it that far . they certainly never got anywhere close to the pacific !
my personal favorite (and basis for my semi freelanced future layout) is the Phoenix , Prescott and Sante Fe . it was partially owned by the ATSF and was eventually absorbed by them . both ATSF and SP (among others) did that in many places in arizona and texas (probably elsewhere too) in order to get money raised locally to build the tracks and get the railroad running before taking over when the railroad started making a profit
a lot of these railroads were never very big , didn’t have huge rosters of equipment , didn’t have huge yards , ran through rough country to service a small number of customers . in other words they’re just about perfect for a model railroad , especially if you don’t have room for a basement-filling empire
The St. Louis-San Francisco never got to San Francisco but it did get to Pensacola, Florida. It should have been called the St Louis-Pensacola. I can see it now; a steam engine thundering across the Mississippi hinterland, a big “Pensy” emblazoned on its tender.
Wait a minute . . . . . . . . . . why does that name look familiar?
The Waynesburg & Washington RR was a PRR-controlled narrow gauge line here in SW PA. From its early days, it was narrow gauge, and took hours to run between both towns. Passenger service ended in 1929. At that time, most of the equipment was stored. During WWII, the line was widened to standard gauge, and a rail truck was used. That was how freight was hauled until the late 1970s…when most of the line was abandoned. By then, the Monongahela was running what was left, and the Waynesburg Southern (built in '68 to serve a coal mine). Most of the former W&W buildings were torn down in the late '70s and early '80s. All that’s left, is Second #4, a 2-6-0 preserved at the county museum. It’s in great shape, but doesn’t run…and probably never will. Now, that line is all NS coal drags. Even though the W&W is gone, you can still see where it once ran–some places still have the rails intact! Even the station in Washington still survives. Too bad it’s being used to store building materials
