I am presently building a new layout (this time, it’s a HOn3 Rio Grande operation), as I had modeled HO scale in the past and still have some FSM structures… and I am wondering if they would fit in with the new layout prototypically?
I have found lots of photos & videos showing mining operations, and stock pen operations… but I would also like to use my old grain elevator, and creamery buildings. However, I have only found one old reference photo that shows a grain elevator… but so far no creamery operation. Any advice or comments welcome…
Followed some of your NG conversations over on the general discussion area. I would say go for it. You can always allow for an industry or business that was not actually present on the D&RGW without undue hand wringing as long as it is period appropriate.
I assume you want to do the D&RGW to avoid making a fanatsy road and take advantage of the superlatively decaled Blackstone products. Lotsa’ fabulous stuff in HOn3 is currently out there.
The story of the D&RGW and its virtual sister road, the RGS, are best found in some detail in Bob Richardson’s three classic picture books, “Chasing the Narrow Gauge”. I spent the $150.00 for all three at Ron’s books inorder to get a visual flavoring of the two roads, but boy, did I get a written history lesson, too!!!
Bob owned a motel in Alamosa in the late 40’s and probably took more narrow gauge images that any other human being. He was the “grand old man” of late Colorado narrow gauge history. He became intimate with the working personnel and tells all. Settle back into your easy chair and let the narrow gauge flow into your pores. There are waybills, dining car menus, time tables, crew pay rate tables, engine coal and oil tickets, wreck reports and hundreds and hundreds of images over the three books. It is like you are back there in the 40s and 50’s!
I am planning on using a lot of non-typical, but period appropriate old HO structures from my old HO standard gauge layouts. The great part is you can put a 66 chevy impala and a TV station on a D&RGW layout because that “steam only” railroad ran as a working road into the 1970’s! It is tough to justify all of that rather modern stuff on any standard gauge steam layout.
Narrow gaugers are a triffle bit more careful about period related items on their layouts. I guess this is mostly due to the time and effort of scratchbuilding so much
In the days before mechanical refrigeration, milk products normally had to be processed locally, so many smallish creameries existed throughout the US. I’d guess if there were no creameries directly served by the D&RGW there would have been ones in the area the railroad served.
I recall seeing a lot of cattle grazing in areas once served by the Grande’s narrow gauge lines. Most of them were probably beef cattle, but I don’t doubt that there were some local dairy herds as well.
As for the grain elevator, turn its service end for end (loads inbound instead of outbound) and you have a feed mill - which would have been necessary to keep those herds fed through the Colorado winter.
The Grande tried to keep running all year. My two 762mm gauge prototypes folded their hands at the first snow and went into hibernation until spring. Of course, the slightly wider (1067mm gauge) JNR ran trains so close together that snow never had a chance to build up…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - narrow gauge and narrower gauge)
I know for a fact that Durango had a uranium refiner/ concentrator facility. I have a multipage government U.S.E.I.A. report of its decontamination and reclaimation at Durango. Yet, in no photograph that I have ever seen in or about the D&RGW or the RGS have I ever seen an image of it or any car loaded with uranium specific ore or concentrate, yet we know it traveled there from Uravan, and many other nearby mines and concentrate left there by the metric ton! Durango, alone, produced over 7.85 million pounds of pure, refined Uranium oxide. This meant with a normal 1% ore coming in, they had to have shipped in about 700 million pounds of ore. As late as 2010 the radiation found in the well water at the Durango test well site was rising! Gunnison and Grand junction were in the same boat with such concentrators belching out Uranium and related clean up efforts. some of these concentrators operated into the 70’s!
Therefore, if sleepy little Durango and the D&RGW had such dealings with something so weird as this, then a simple creamery and grain mill can certainly not be out of place whether pictured in real images or not. The D&RGW did run reefers on occasion.
I wouldn’t sweat such details. Use your old HO stuff and make good excuses. Some have already been offered up.
If you can find one, an old employee timetable can be invaluable because it will list all the businesses the railroad served, and their locations…plus the location and lengths of sidings, spur tracks etc.
Hi I dont say much here. But thought maby I should. There was at lest 2 small grainerys on the D&RGW narrow gauge. located between Alamosa and Antnino.“cant spell” I drive by them quite often. model in Hon3 with A little Standard gauge. Live in CO.
Unless you are building a reproduction of a particular town, there are some on the Colorado roads that every building has been made available by one manufacturer or another over the years, you are rather free to do what ever you choose. As noted above, before refrigeration much of what we shipped and how we shipped it was quite different. This is grounds for research in the area you want to model… but after that… put in what looks good to you.