Hey guys. Once again I have shifted from RR to RR each with a different plan. I need to find a RR with sufficient intrest, one that has long mainline runs through big mountains and heaps of intensive switching.
Once I find a RR with all that I’ll post again. In the meantime post your ideas!
Mitchell
Not interesting enough eh.
What type of railroad are you looking to model. Since your in Australia, do you want to model a local railroad or an American railroad. I asume somewhere in the USa 'cause I don’t think there are to many mountains in AU. Maybe try the Southern Pacific’s Sisque Route (don’t know how to spell it, and I live sooooooo close to it too!) or maybe the UP’s route over Sherman Hill? Or maybe the DRGW over Cumbres Pass. There are many of these type of railroads to choose from, and these are some of the best I can think of. All have lots of switching too.
hmmm good ideas.
Mitchell
Anything in the coal fiels of the appalancian (don’t know if I spelled it right) mountains. Maybe a smaller road to provide some challenges, like say the East Broad Top RR.
Food for thought.
Chesapeake and Ohio, or the Western Maryland would be good candidates. And, this enables you to run large 2-6-6-6’s and WM 4-6-6-4’s! And maybe a few GDRMCo locos.[^]
How about Maria’s Pass in Montana? LOTS of mountains and very intensive switching at Whitefish and Shelby.
I’m looking into finding a custom model maker to make some of the GDRMB’s steamers. Maybe you could help Scott.
Mitchell
Well guys i’ve settled on the Shasta Route of SP. Suggestions for which part to model wanted.
Mitchell
Hey how are you doing?
What about CP or CN between Toronto and Northern Ontario with the Ontario Northland Railroad. Lots of action including VIA trains (long VIA train (the Canadian)) and the Northlander-excursion passenger train among tons of freight traffic especially intermodal, unit grain, unit chemical and/or petrochemical and ore trains.
Hey Andrew havent heard from you for ages. Hope the G&A is going good. I’ve seen pics and stuff about the Canadian roads and in Toronto. I like they scenery up there too but for me the Shasta has all that but not a capital city lol. I’ll consider it.
Mitchell
Well, for scenery, curves, bridges, and tunnels, it’s hard to top the Siskiyou line - but you can get all kinds of variety on the Shasta Division - even lava beds and high desert on the Modoc Line (along with a lot of narrow gauge-type curvature). The original crossing into Oregon was via the Siskiyous, but that was supplanted by the opening of the Cascade Line after WWI, which bypassed the curves and grades of the Siskiyous. The Modoc connected the Cascade line with the original Overland Route in Nevada.
I strongly recommend John Signor’s excellent book “Southern Pacific’s Shasta Division” for ideas, track plans, and great photos. If you really want a big city, and you’re willing to do some selective compression, you could probably include either Portland or Sacramento. There are good track plans of the Portland area in Tom Dill’s “Southern Pacific in Oregon”, which PFM published a few years ago.
There are also a bunch of good websites, even a few specific to the Siskiyou line - a bunch of the guys who post regularly on this site model it. As far as power goes, the SP didn’t use many Mallets on the Siskiyou after about 1924, but they used both the 2-8-8-2s and 4-8-8-2s on the Modoc Line. The 4-6-6-2s also ran on the Portland Division for awhile, but the mainstays were SP’s larger power, particularly 2-10-2s.
I’m a big fan, although I’ve never visited, and I’m very partial to Signor’s books on the SP: he does a good job of writing for an audience of railfans, and he includes a lot of interesting timetable material and good maps - not so much on rosters, unfortunately, but there are a lot of books that can fill that particular gap where the SP is concerned.
Good luck -
Rob