How many modelers have gone with the freelanced/protolanced method of modeling and created their own short line railroad? I know a number of free/proto rr’s have been featured in MR (V&O, A&M, Utah Belt) but they seem to be bigger rr’s like a Class I or (regional) Class II. What about the make-it-or-break-it Class III’s?
I have been pondering a short line but quickly got stock when it came to a locomotive roster and being blasted by thoughts of C420’s, GP15’s, GP38’s, SD70M’s, U23B’s SD7’s, RS3’s and such all running the rails. Their are just too many loco models I love. To complicate things I try to choose models available in HO scale AND N.
Peep River Logging, running a 3thruck Climax, a Varney Dockside 0-4-0 “Little Joe”, and future steam locomotives of unknown types. It is a very Short Line, with the main of two feet in length heading off into a tunnel. However, the RR has track rights over about 2/3rds of my Northern Pacific layout set on September 18th, 1954.
The ECI (East Central Indiana) railroad has been my railroad since 1983. It is a 1970 short line running from Anderson Indiana down to Westport Indiana. It has also picked up a few NYC locos and a PRR steamer as well.
On my last railroad. my short line was the Johnston and East Texas (“JET”), wholly owned by Big Piney Lumber company but operated as a common carrier.
(Caboose with dog as “assistant to the conductor.”):
Line ran from mill to interchange with Santa Fe. However, Big Piney ALSO ran its company-service logging trams over JET rails and ALSO a short distance by trackage rights over the Santa Fe to a logging reload.
The logging tram operation reflected the prototype situation of Kirby Lumber Co. on the ATSF in the Silsbee, Texas area.
My layout currently under construction will feature a Santa Fe end-of-the-line terminal at the Texas coast, with a connection to a port-owned switching railroad which will be modeled almost in its entirety. However, the switching railroad will be operated by a “terminal association” made up of all the trunkline railroads which operate in “my” seaport- the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, Missouri Pacific/Missouri Kansas Texas, etc. (I do NOT model the operation of all these competing railroads, even though they are there! Just not enough room.) However the various railroads provide switchers and crews to switch FOR the port on a rotating basis, which allows me to run a switcher or GEEP from a non-Santa Fe line…
Mine is the Willoughby Line. I have combined scenes and Equipment from the Sierra, Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy and various other Sierra shortlines to make a layout that feels real but never actually existed.
When the Clinchfield completed their “Elkhorn Extension” in 1909, it opened up a large area of deep Southwest Virginia to more profitable logging and mining operations. One of those short lines carrying coal and lumber to the new connection with the Clinchfield was the Winneshiek & Western Rail Road.
The Winneshiek & Western operates considerable equipment that is very similar to Maryland & Pennsylvania prototypes, but also uses geared locomotives for the logging runs and has been known to lease other power for testing, such as when they tried running a 2-4-4-2 from the Little River Railroad for a couple months:
The Picture Gorge & Western is a short line that had/has aspirations of becoming a transcontinental. Building east from Charleston and Marshfield (now Coos Bay, Oregon) the eventual plan was to merge with one of the granger roads in Idaho or Wyoming to form a true transcon. However, funding and investor patience ran out when the PG&W reached Roseburg. The interchange with the Oregon & California (never taken over by the SP in my alternate reality) was as far as the line has gotten. Coos Bay was a far better choice of Pacific harbor than the rival Oregon Pacific (with similar transcon aspirations) had with Yaquina Bay. But the world apparently wasn’t ready for another Seattle or San Francisco, and Charleston remains a fishing village.
Sensing opportunity, the Port Orford & Elk River Ry & Navigation Co (3ft gauge) changed from being strictly a logging line to common carrier, and extended itself over the coastal mountains to meet the PG&W at Lebanon. The area near Lebanon also provided more rich Port Orford cedar stands, further increasing revenues for the PO&ER. With Port Orford cedar’s premium price over redwood when delivered to San Francisco Bay, the PO&ER could convince doghole schooners to come another 200 miles north to Port Orford for their lumber cargoes. On the trip north, the schooners carried the civilized world supplies and items desired in Port Orford and the logging camps. With the ties to the PG&W and O&C, the PO&ER provided cheap transport for food stuffs, coal, and other supplies from Oregon’s Willamette Valley to Port Orford and the lumber camps. Port Orford cedar was/is too valuable to burn as fuel.
If/when Charleston and Marshfield ever become the major port they could be, Port Orford will likely revert to a doghole lumber port, and little more, due to its lack of protection from SW winds and storm surges.
the PSAP a local railroad that exists and uses the former BN line out to Shelton Wa., My fictional road DRS(duprey rail services)(I also need to paint locos for DRS) interchanges with the BNSF and a fictional trucking company owned by my grandfather called SFI(sampson freight industries) which has terminal locomotives in the form of GP9’s painted like GN’s Big sky blue(once I get to it).
My short line is basically used as an opportunity to model representations of the things I see when traveling through my home state. Industries mainly.
It was originally based on the Dubois County Railroad in southern Indiana, which uses an ALCO S2 and S4 for motive power over its 16 mile line. But the operations were a bit too limited to model it exactly. The basic theme is similar, but the layout has more industries online which increases traffic and the size of motive power needed.
The freelanced layout is basically a three locomotive railroad, with only one moving at any one time. (The only place to park a train is in staging, and their usually are no pasing sidings on small shortlines, hence none on my layout.) There are two crews. One handles the regular freight, and one handles the the quarry train that appears every three days. My schedule condenses one week’s operations into a session. It basically consists of moving cars from the interchange to the various industries over the layout.
Since I like locomotives, I have several sets of three locomotives to run on the layout. They mainly are arranged by slight decade changes in the setting, or paint scheme, or the profitablility of the line. For example, when I model the line as profitable, I use brand new gensets and a gp40. When the line is not profitable, it uses its S2, S4, and a beat up U23B or RS36. If I run the line as a subsidiary of CSX, I use three CSX locomotives. An NS sub, then NS…etc…
I used to have different stories for each set. Now I don’t worry about that and run what I want.
One aspect of the DCRR that is interesting in real life, is the way it switches its major customer, a newly built feed mill. A problem arises because the feed mill requires a cut of cars that is longer than the runaround that is in place (installed long ago). Instead of breaking up the cut, it uses two locomotive
Mine is the Smoke River. The concept is a Southern RR subsidiary that uses SR paint schemes but lettered for Smoke River (which just also happens to be SR) The Southern had several subsidiary lines that used SR paint, but their own names, such as the well known Central of Georgia, and the less know, but partial inspiration for mine, the Carolina & Northwestern. It’s also inspired by the Buffalo Union Carolina part of which went to SR when the BUC when under.
Mine is the Blackwater and Butte Creek Railroad - a fictional line that runs through southern Oregon in the 1930s. The terrain is so rough that rail is the only way to access the tiny town of Butte Creek (originally established as a logging camp). Blackwater is a larger community, named for the black colored algae that makes the lagoon look almost like ink. The railroad gets revenue from a few small industries including the Stave Brothers Cooperage (barrel factory) and Spock’s Wingnuts. It also runs a twice daily passenger train to and from Butte Creek.
I love the way freelancing this short line lets me exercise my imagination and creativity. For example, I casually left out the depression and any sign of segregation, and created my own little utopia.
Most of the railroad’s equipment was purchased for the price of scrap metal from more modern railroads when they upgraded to piston-valve locos, so I can run anything that will fit under the bridge and has slide valves. To be completely honest, I prefer cute locos to behemoths, and rolling stock with “character,” so a short line is a natural for my tastes.
Here’s a picture of the Blackwater Cannonball on the John Allen Memorial Trestle, heading upgrade from Blackwater to Butte Creek. The freight is a local, heading down to Blackwater with car loads of supplies for the wingnut and barrel factories:
Over time I’ll add more vegitation to make it look more like Oregon and less like Utah.
Hiding in the back corner of our basement is a small short line/bridge line/interchange line known to all within the nearest 50 feet or so, as the Cascade Valley RR. Tucked into a gap in the Cascade Mountains, this little railroad is the result of a local miser acquiring soon to be abandoned trackage between the BN and UP. A wee bit quirky, and real enough to be one of those “might have been” places.
Mine is identified in my forum handle, the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo. It runs from the Japan National Railway interchange at Tomikawa to a couple of collieries, with one passing siding about half way to the first (older) colliery at Yamamoto. There is NO double-ended passing siding at Yamamoto, but three short trains can get into the clear to allow a coal unit to run through to or from the big colliery. (I leave figuring out how as an exercise for the student. Hint - there’s a double slip involved.) Ruling grade is 4%, minimum radius 350mm.
Motive power consists of a motley collection of mis-matched 0-6-0Ts, a 2-6-2T, an 0-8-0T with roller skate wheels and Okii-chan, the cosmetically modified originally Uintah 2-6-6-2T. Passenger stock consists of a couple of superannuated short ex-JNR passenger cars, one purpose-built coach (carries miners to work) and a 4-wheel double-ended rail bus. Freight stock combines a ragged cluster of obsolete ex-JNR 4-wheelers and modern 8- (12-, 14-, 16-) wheel coal hoppers and hopper-brakes for unit train service. All inbound and outbound loads except those coal units move in JNR cars.
Layout-wise, the TTT is the visible action on one side of a 2-car garage. It sits on top of half a dozen JNR staging facilities, including the only place on the layout where a full-scale train can be turned end-for-end, and a cassette dock.
There are three other short lines that supposedly link with the JNR. One, a rural trolley route, is just a single track that leaves its platform on the lower level of the Tomikawa station and disappears out of sight under/ in back of Pagoda Hill. The others, both 762mm gauge, will be static displays at the other JNR station, Haruyama, unless I lengthen them and get them up to a second level in the future.
My short line is the 59 mile,narrow gauge, Paradox, Uravan & Placerville, (th’ PUP). It is a mineral road created specifically for WWII uranium, vanadium, copper and lead ore movement in western Colorado and connects with the RGS in Placerville. Its main town facility is Naturita/Nucla Colorado, right in the middle of the road which has an ore concentrator facility located on the San Miguel river.
It was started in 1939 and will die with the coming of better post war roads, trucking, the movement of better Uranium ore finds in Utah and New Mexico and the loss of its RGS connection, via abandonment in 1952.
Mine is the Port Destiny Terminal RR , The Railroad is owned by the L&N and the Southern RR it is located in North Florida’s Gulf Coast [quote user="BerkshireSteam
